One evening I asked Claude to draft a reply to an app store review. The draft came back polite, tidy, and completely unusable.
It opened with a stiff line of thanks that no wallpaper-app user would expect. What I normally write is shorter and a little looser. I rewrote my request three times. The tone still would not land.
My hands stopped over the keyboard, and then it hit me: I had never told Claude what my work actually is.
What was missing before any wording fix
At first I kept polishing phrasing. "More casual." "Shorter." "Less formal." Each fix moved the answer a little closer, and then the next request started from zero again.
The reason is simple. Claude cannot see the context outside our conversation. Who reads this text, where it appears, what I have written before — none of that was in my request.
Think of handing a task to a new colleague. If you only say "write a reply to this review," you will not get what you hoped for. You first explain how your shop works and who the readers are, and only then ask.
I should have done the same with Claude.
A work description: five slots, one page
You do not need a long manual. I use one page with five slots.
| Slot | What to write | My example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The work | What you make and who it reaches | I run wallpaper apps on my own; most users open them on a phone during a commute |
| 2. Where the text goes | The place the writing will appear | The store's review-reply box, with little room for length |
| 3. The reader | Their situation and temperament | Someone stuck on a bug, or someone who left kind words |
| 4. What I won't do | Phrases to avoid, promises I cannot make | No "fixed in the next update" promises; no boilerplate apology at the start |
| 5. A sample of my writing | Two or three real pieces you wrote | A couple of short replies I actually posted |
The fifth slot made the biggest difference. Pasting something I had written beat any adjective like "casual." The tone matched much sooner.
Fill it in backwards, starting from the samples
If you go top to bottom, slot one stalls you. Describing your own work in a single sentence is surprisingly hard.
Work backwards instead. Find two or three things you wrote recently — emails, replies, anything. Then recall what you were careful about while writing them, and put that in slot four. Move up to slots three and two, and slot one tends to settle by itself.
I spent about half an hour going top to bottom the first time. Going backwards took roughly ten minutes.
How my first request changed
Before the description, my request was just this:
Please write a reply to the following review.
"The app crashes right after launch. Please fix it."After:
[About my work]
I run a wallpaper app on my own. The reply appears in the store's review box, so it must be short.
The reader is stuck on a bug. I skip the boilerplate apology and open with a question that clarifies the situation.
I never write "we will definitely fix it in the next update."
Sample: "Sorry for the trouble. Could you tell me your device model and OS version? I'll look into the cause as soon as I know."
[This request]
Please write a reply to the following review.
"The app crashes right after launch. Please fix it."The draft that came back matched the sample's tone almost exactly. I changed a single phrase.
Stop pasting it every time
Copying the page by hand did not last. I skipped it on busy days, and the off-target answers came right back.
So I moved the page into a Claude Project — a place for ongoing work — as its instructions. Conversations started inside a Project carry those instructions along. Screen names and layouts can change with updates, so please check Claude's official help for the current steps.
If you do not use Projects, a note in any memo app works: paste the page at the start of each chat. Where the page lives matters less than making sure it arrives first, every time.
Let it grow, but only where it slips
The first page can be rough. Add lines only where an answer actually slipped.
In my case slot four grew after about two weeks. A reply had come back with an emoji that felt off, so I added one line: no emoji. Adding things in advance only makes the page long and buries the lines that matter.
What to do today
Find two or three short pieces you wrote recently, paste them, and jot down three things you were careful about while writing them. That is already half of the description.
Since I started handing over the page before polishing the request, my rewrites have dropped noticeably.