I am surprised that people are surprised this is how I prompt Claude.

Talk to Claude the way you would a coworker. There's no secret to prompting. There's no need to be overly scaffolded or prescriptive for most tasks -- give Claude a goal, and it will figure it out.

Back in the Sonnet 3.5 days, your prompt mattered a lot. Nowadays, it's much more important to communicate to the model:

1. What you want it to do
2. How much effort you want it to spend
3. How it should verify that it did the right thing