Prompting patterns for your work

Working with Claude — CC BY 4.0

Most of the value in Claude isn’t in clever one-off questions. It’s in having a small set of prompts you reuse — for the jobs that come up every week in your role. Once you’ve got three or four that work, you stop starting from scratch and you stop getting surprised by the output.

A word of honesty before you start Tier 2: this is the tier that actually makes you proficient, and it asks a little more of you than Tier 1 did. Not hours of study — but real reps. You won’t get reliable results from reading these patterns once; you get them from running your own work through them a few times, until checking the output is second nature. That’s the whole difference between someone who “uses AI” and someone who can trust what they ship. Tiers 1 and 2 are where that habit is built — the rest of the course assumes it.

Every pattern below follows the same shape, because that shape is what makes the result reliable:

1. Give it the role and the goal — who it’s answering as, and what a good result looks like.
2. Give it the material — paste the text, or attach the file. Don’t make it guess.
3. Say how you’ll check it — ask for its sources, its workings, or its uncertainties, so you can verify rather than trust.
4. You review and decide — the output is a draft for you to own, not an answer to sign off unread.

That last step is the whole point. Claude drafts; you direct, review and carry the result. Keep the judgment with you and these patterns are safe to lean on. Skip it and you’re just hoping.

You can paste any of these at the top of a new chat. If one earns its keep, save it — either in your standing instructions, or in a Project (a workspace with its own instructions and its own uploaded files, so the setup is there every time you open it). (Projects and standing instructions live in the Claude app; the exact menu names shift as the app updates — confirm in-app or in the current help pages.)

If you run the place — owner / ops

You want a straight answer and the reasoning behind it, not reassurance.

Act as an operations adviser. I run [one line on the business]. Here’s the situation: [paste the facts — numbers, dates, what’s changed]. Give me the three options you’d actually consider, with the main risk of each. Mark anything you’re unsure about, and tell me the one thing I should check before deciding. Don’t smooth over the downsides.

Worked example — a café owner deciding whether to add a second coffee cart at the Saturday market:

Act as an operations adviser. I run a café; weekend trade is our biggest earner. I’m thinking about a second cart at the Saturday market — extra rent $180/week, one more casual at $28/hour for 6 hours. Last three markets we turned away maybe 15–20 customers an hour at peak. Give me the three options, the main risk of each, and the one number I should measure for a month before committing. Flag any figure you’re assuming rather than reading from what I gave you.

You get a decision aid you can pressure-test — and because you asked it to flag its assumptions, you can see exactly which numbers are yours and which it invented. Those are the ones to check.

If you write and communicate — writing / comms

The trap here is a draft that reads well and quietly changes your meaning. Guard against it by giving Claude your actual points and keeping the review tight.

Draft a [newsletter / notice / post] for [who reads it]. These are the points, in my order of importance: [list them]. Keep my meaning exact — don’t add claims I didn’t make. Plain language, no filler. Give me two versions: one short, one fuller. Then list anything you were unsure I meant.

Worked example — a community centre notifying members that a class is moving night:

Draft a short notice for our members. Points, most important first: Tuesday yoga moves to Thursday from 5 August; same time, same tutor, same room; no change to fees; if Thursdays don’t suit, reply and we’ll help find another class. Warm but brief. Keep it factual — invent nothing. Give me a two-line version for a text and a fuller one for email.

Read both against your points before anything goes out. You’re checking one thing: did it say what you meant, and only what you meant?

If you work with numbers — analysis / data

Claude can read a spreadsheet or a PDF you attach and pull it apart in plain English. It can also make arithmetic mistakes with a confident face. So make it show its workings.

Here’s [attached file / pasted data]. I want to know [the specific question]. Show your working step by step so I can follow the maths. State any assumption you had to make. If the data can’t answer the question, say so rather than guessing.

Worked example — a treasurer checking a subscription trend from a membership CSV:

I’ve attached our membership CSV — join date and status per member. Work out net members added each quarter for the last two years, and whether the trend is up or down. Show the count for each quarter so I can check it against my own tally. Tell me if any rows are missing dates or look malformed, rather than quietly dropping them.

The step-by-step count is what lets you verify. Sanity-check one quarter by hand; if that matches, you can trust the shape of the rest. If it doesn’t, you’ve caught it before it reached the committee.

If you deal with people — customer-facing

Replies to customers carry your name and, sometimes, a promise. Draft with Claude, but never let it commit you to anything you haven’t decided.

Draft a reply to this message: [paste it]. My position is [what you’re willing to offer / not offer]. Tone: [warm and plain / firm and polite]. Don’t promise anything beyond what I’ve told you here — no refunds, dates or commitments I didn’t authorise. Flag anywhere you think I need to make a decision before sending.

Worked example — a tradesperson answering a customer chasing a delayed job:

Draft a reply to this text: [paste]. My position: the part is delayed by the supplier, not us; realistic new date is the 12th; I’ll confirm the morning of; I’m not offering a discount but I am sorry for the wait. Warm, straightforward, no grovelling. Don’t invent a firmer date than the 12th, and flag if anything reads as a promise I haven’t made.

Read it as your customer would, then send it yourself. A draft that commits you to something you didn’t say is worse than no draft.

Two habits that make every pattern work

• Attach, don’t retype. If the material is in a document, spreadsheet or image, give Claude the file rather than a paraphrase. It works from what’s actually there instead of your summary of it — and you’re not introducing errors in the retyping.
• Ask for the seams. Every pattern above ends by asking Claude to mark what it assumed, what it’s unsure of, or where you need to decide. That line is what turns “trust me” into “here’s where to look.” It’s the difference between output you can verify and output you can only hope about.

Three moves that keep your judgment sharp

The patterns above get you reliable output. These three keep you in the work, so the tool sharpens your thinking instead of standing in for it — which, over months of daily use, matters as much as any single result.

• Ask for hints, not the answer. When you’re learning something or weighing a decision, ask Claude to point at what to consider, not to hand you the conclusion. “What would I need to know to decide this well?” beats “What should I do?” You keep the thinking; it keeps you from missing something.
• Start on paper, then let it argue back. For anything that’s really yours to work out, write your own rough view first, then paste it in and ask Claude to make the strongest case against it. You get a sharpened version of your own idea, not a replacement for it.
• Ask for the thinkers, not the thought. Instead of “what’s the answer,” try “who has worked on this, what would each of them say, and what should I read?” You come away knowing the landscape and where to look next, rather than holding one confident answer you can’t trace.

Build your own from these. Steal the shape — role, material, how you’ll check, you decide — and fill in the jobs your week actually contains. Four patterns you trust beat forty you have to re-read every time.

Any legal, tax or compliance wording these patterns produce is general help, not advice for your situation. For anything that carries real consequence, run it past a qualified professional.