Specific beats vague

Build-along · ~8 min at your own keyboard

The highest-ROI context tip there is: scope the request. 'Fix the pricing table in quote-template-v3' gives a clean target; 'make my quotes better' invites the model to wander your whole folder burning tokens and guessing. Scoping removes the questions you could have answered up front. It should not remove questions about things you genuinely haven't decided — those are worth asking.

The long version: Specific requests ↗

Do this

0/3

Checkpoints

▸You should now see your vague request and a scoped rewrite written down.
▸You should now see both runs finish in separate fresh sessions.
▸You should now see a difference in questions asked and files touched.

The three ways this goes wrong

Both runs share context and look the same. — Run each in a fresh session, or /clear between them.
The scoped version is still vague. — Name the exact file, the exact section, and the exact outcome.
Claude asks clarifying questions on the scoped run. — Sort them: a detail you knew and left out goes into the request. A real decision you hadn't made is a good question — answer it.

Share what happened

Paste the vague version, the scoped version, and what differed in the runs.

Strip API keys, passwords, and tokens before you paste. Swap them for [KEY].

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