I wanted proof that my prompts improved from four months ago. The results turned into this post. Around early January I added these instructions to my Claude.ai user preferences: If required information is missing, ask clarifying questions before answering. Before giving the final answer: list assumptions, identify missing data, state confidence level. If appropriate, advise on how to write a prompt more efficiently in the future. Then I had Claude pull my chat history from before and after, and look for patterns. I figured I'd see changes in what I was asking. The actual change was in how I structured conversations around the asking, in three phases. Phase 1: one-line prompts (early January) Real prompt from January 8: "How do I set up a eSIM on a Windows laptop?" I was asking the way you'd ask a search engine. Claude wrote a generic eSIM tutorial. I bounced because it didn't match my situation, and never came back. That was my default. One sentence prompts. No context, no constraint, no goal. Phase 2: Claude starts showing its work (mid-January) This is where the instructions started doing actual work. The "list assumptions" line forced Claude to write down what it was filling in for me. When a response opened with "Assuming this is a Windows endpoint with standard user permissions and no recent OS reimage," I could correct the wrong guesses before they corrupted the rest of the answer. About half the time, at least one was wrong. "Identify missing data" produced a list of the questions Claude wanted to ask but was about to silently guess at. Reading that list every response taught me what to include upfront. Every "missing data" bullet was a future prompt fix. "State confidence" forced Claude to mark which parts of the answer were solid and which to stress-test. "High confidence that one of the first three checks will identify the cause" is useful in a way that a confident-sounding wall of text just isn't. The prompt-efficiency line pulled the other three together into a habit. After enough rounds of "next time include the OS version and whether the machine is domain-managed," I stopped needing to be told.

Very simple but useful term sheet I created for Numan! Figured it would be useful for you all too, made a simple webpage you all can access to look at it. https://rindig.github.io/TermSheet/

You just saw how the folder structure adapts to different use cases. Vote below, then drop your customized setup in the comments. What did you name your workspaces and why?