prompt-engineeringlisted

# Prompt Engineering ## Challenge Claude to Do Better Claude will give you a reasonable answer. You often want an excellent one. The difference is in how you ask. Weak: "Write a function to parse dates." Strong: "Write a date parser that handles ISO 8601, RFC 2822, and common US/EU formats. It should return a consistent internal representation and throw specific error types for invalid input. Make it elegant — no regex spaghetti." The strong version sets quality expectations, specifies edge cases, and demands craft. Claude responds to these signals. ## Demand Elegance When Claude produces a working but mediocre solution, push back: - "This works but it's not elegant. Simplify it." - "There's duplication between these three functions. Refactor." - "This is too clever. Make it readable." - "A junior engineer should understand this. Rewrite for clarity." Don't accept the first output as final. Iterate. ## When to Be Specific vs When to Delegate Be specific about: - Requirements (what the code MUST do) - Constraints (performance, compatibility, patterns to follow) - Verification criteria (how to know it works) Delegate to Claude: - Implementation approach (unless you have a strong preference) - Variable naming and code organization details - Which standard library functions to use - Test case generation (give the categories, let Claude enumerate) ## Writing Detailed Specs A good spec eliminates ambiguity. The SPEC.md pattern works because it forces specificity befo