Chapter 2 · Practice 4 of 4
State constraints the assistant would otherwise guess at
From Writing task prompts
Why it matters
Assistants fill gaps with reasonable defaults, and reasonable defaults are often not your project's choices. Say up front:
- libraries: "use only libraries already in package.json";
- scope: "change only files under src/billing";
- compatibility: "keep the public function signatures unchanged";
- style of solution: "keep it minimal; no new abstractions".
Anthropic's prompting guide notes that some models tend to overengineer, adding extra files, abstractions or flexibility nobody asked for, and suggests explicit guidance to keep solutions minimal.
A one-line constraint costs nothing and saves a review round.
Avoid
- Letting the assistant add a new dependency without asking