Advanced prompting: the deep end, mapped.

Basic prompting gets you competent answers. The advanced patterns — structure, thinking budgets, output contracts — get you answers you can build a business process on. This is the Pro+ toolkit.

01 Structure beats eloquence

For complex asks, stop writing paragraphs and start writing sections. Claude responds unusually well to clearly delimited structure:

The example is the highest-leverage line — one concrete sample of good output outperforms three paragraphs of description, every time. Complex jobs without an example are requests; with one, they're specifications.

02 Extended thinking: buy depth with seconds

For genuinely hard problems — tangled tradeoffs, subtle documents, math that matters — ask Claude to think longer: "Take your time and reason through this carefully before answering." On surfaces with explicit extended-thinking controls, turn them on for exactly these cases. The trade is seconds for rigor; spend them when the answer will be relied on, skip them for brainstorms. (Same stakes-based routing as our model-picker lesson — the principle is universal.)

03 Output contracts

When Claude's output feeds a process — a spreadsheet, another prompt, a template — specify the contract and forbid drift: "Return EXACTLY this structure: [fields]. No preamble, no commentary, no extra sections. If a field is unknown, write UNKNOWN rather than guessing." That last clause converts silent gaps into visible ones — the difference between automation you trust and automation you audit forever.

04 The two-pass pattern, weaponized

05 Role framing, used honestly

"You are an experienced [X]" still works — not as magic, but as context compression: it loads conventions, vocabulary, and standards in five words. The advanced version assigns the audience too: "Write as a CFO, for a skeptical board." Role plus audience plus example is 90% of what prompt-engineering courses charge for.