The Prompting That Still Matters
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The Prompting That Still Matters
I want to be careful here: context engineering doesn’t mean individual prompts don’t matter. They do. A sloppy request still produces sloppy output.
What changes is what you’re optimising for in a prompt. You’re no longer trying to re-establish who you are and what you care about — that’s in your context files. The prompt itself can be shorter and more direct because it doesn’t have to carry all that weight.
The craft of prompting in 2025 is less about elaborate templates and more about:
Being specific about the task. Not “write something about automation” but “write a module introduction for PDA 2.0 that covers skills, hooks, and real examples from morning-brief and content-pipeline. Aim for 800 words.”
Being honest about constraints. What’s the deadline? What format does the output need to be in? What should it definitely not include? The more constraints you specify, the less work you do in the review cycle.
Knowing when to be vague on purpose. Sometimes you want Claude to fill in the gaps creatively. Sometimes you want it to follow a pattern exactly. The difference matters and you have to signal it.
Iteration as the method. The best prompts aren’t the ones you get right on the first try — they’re the ones where you read the output, spot what’s wrong, and refine. Three rounds of “do this, but less X and more Y” often beats trying to specify everything upfront.