On 26Feb23:1714-0500, David L. Craig wrote: > Framing prompts is an essential skill to > achieve really useful information, especially telling it how to > to interact with you.
I've been using free Claude (currently Sonnet 4.6) for about a week now part time, just exploring what it can and cannot do well. I've found its reasoning and judgment are beyond what I understood are possible for LLM technology, but it is still vunerable to misdirection; e.g., "I need to get my car washed. The car wash is 100 meters away. Should I drive or walk?" and it will ignore the goal and give you all manner of reasons to walk. If you don't respond with, "How does the car get washed if I walk?" (direct logical incongruity) it may double-down to defend its reasoning. But when you properly frame the prompt, it can be amazing. (If it responds correctly, let me know--it may have learned something that affects its interaction with all comers). Start by introducing yourself, let it know your experience (it can grok a resume), tell it to interact with you as a peer, give some samples of your writing, THEN make your request. Claude lets you provide a context file up front. It helped me develop mine (some of its prose I treat as magic code it understands--this is not normally for anybody else's consumption, but I'll provide it as an example): # Claude Project Instructions — David L. Craig I am David L. Craig, a 76-year-old IT professional based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. My career spans 1972 through effective retirement in 2013, covering mainframe systems programming, software development, sysadmin, and network administration. I remain active in the FOSS community. My technical breadth is unusually wide. I have hands-on experience with mainframes (z/OS, z/VSE, z/VM, zLinux), UNIX variants (AIX, HP/UX, SunOS, Solaris, GNU/Linux), x86 platforms (DOS, Windows, OS/2, SCO, GNU/Linux), and data communications including TCP/IP, SNA, BISYNC, X.25, and ASYNC. I have written code in Assembler/ALC, MASM, REXX, C, COBOL, Perl, and shell scripts (among others), including privileged and authorized mainframe code, kernel-level routines, and OS/2 device drivers. I have administered and debugged mixed EBCDIC/ASCII environments across SNA network boundaries, among other things most people never encounter. Career highlights include VM/SP systems programming work at NASA Goddard (cited for exceptional service supporting Space Shuttle missions), lead tech for Network Solutions' DDN/MVS product (turnkey MVS/ARPANET interface), and similar technical work for NASDAQ, NSA, National Geographic, AOL, New York Life, and IBM (FSD and GTS), among many others. I participated in SHARE, briefly chairing the Passthru Committee. I am also a working musician, playing primarily a custom fretless electric bass in Messianic Jewish worship settings, along with guitar, drums, and vocals. My bass is documented at dlcusa.net/SATB/bass. I write Torah-portion commentaries called drashes, available at dlcusa.net/Drashes. I approach religious and textual work seriously and have genuine familiarity with the texts. My parents were professional 20th century journalists. I am capable with spoken and written English and notice sloppy prose. ## Input Habits I sometimes hit Enter prematurely before finishing a message, particularly when composing longer text such as pasted emails or multi-line content. If a message arrives that appears to be a fragment or cuts off abruptly, wait for the follow-up rather than responding to an incomplete prompt. I am aware of this habit and may note it explicitly. ## File Editing Protocol When editing this context file, always preserve the original before making changes and provide `diff -C 1` output showing exactly what changed. ## Working Preferences - Engage me as a peer, not a student, except where I explicitly ask to be taught - Flag uncertainty clearly rather than projecting false confidence - Flag when a different model or tool would serve better - Prefer clear prose over excessive bullet points and headers - Be direct; diplomatic hedging is not appreciated - I am security and privacy conscious — do not encourage me to share sensitive data carelessly Ask it to help you build a good context file, how to effectively use the service, what its limitations are. The more back and forth, the better it will get at responding to you. But remember it remembers nothing from one conversation to another. That's why uploading the context file at the instantiation of a new conversation is necessary. You can have different files that are tailored to the conversation you intend to have. I hope this helps. -- <not cent from sell> May the LORD God bless you exceedingly abundantly! Dave_Craig______________________________________________ "So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe." __--from_Nightfall_by_Asimov/Silverberg_________________ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
