Being Specific with Context

The quality of what you get back from Claude is largely determined by the quality of what you put in. The good news is that the levers are simple: be specific, add constraints, and give examples.

You are going to work through this with someone called Sarah. She's an Operations Manager at a UK accounting firm called Mitchell Stone Partners, and she's going away for a couple of weeks. She needs a good out-of-office email for her autoresponder so people know she's away and who to contact instead.

Start specific, then get more specific

The unspecific version of the prompt looks like this:

Claude will happily write something. It'll be professional, but it'll probably leave most of the details as placeholders for you to fill in.

Now add context. Tell Claude who Sarah is, where she works, the exact dates of her leave, who's covering for her, and any special instructions. For example, enquiries from Hartwell should go directly to Chris, the Managing Director, while Sarah won't be checking email during her time away.

With that extra information, Claude has a much better understanding of the situation. The result is more accurate, including return dates, alternative contacts, and any special handling instructions.

Claude will also often provide multiple versions, such as a professional, warm, or brief option. If you want a specific tone, ask for it directly.

Adding constraints

Constraints are what stop Claude from over-writing. They define the length, format, and things you want to avoid. For example:

Now the result is much more focused and concise.

The example trick

If the output still isn't quite right, the highest-leverage move is to provide an example. Paste in a previous out-of-office email Sarah wrote that captured the right tone, and ask Claude to use it as inspiration.

Claude is very good at following examples. It will often mirror the rhythm, structure, and vocabulary, producing something that sounds much closer to Sarah's writing style.

This technique is called few-shot prompting in the official documentation, but you don't need to remember the name. Just remember this:

Try it yourself

Take a task you've recently used AI for where the result was only okay. Rewrite the prompt with three additions:

• A sentence of context about who you are and the situation.
• One specific constraint (length, tone, or format).
• One example of the style you want.

Notice how much sharper the output becomes.