Anthropic: Seven Rules for Claude Opus 5.5

Anthropic highlights recommendations for crafting prompts tailored to Claude Opus 5.5. The core message: these models, designed for autonomous workflows and multi-step tasks, do not respond like their predecessors. The first practical guideline is to provide the AI with a persistent task list, along with detailed context.

Anthropic recommends providing Claude with a clear list of tasks

The first rule recommended by Anthropic is to provide Claude with a persistent task list. This principle is based on the importance of context: when the AI has clear information about the product, project, and tasks to be accomplished, the generated responses are more likely to meet expectations. Users often have a specific set of tasks they want Claude to perform for their product. Formalizing and maintaining this list facilitates interactions with the model.

Models designed for agents and complex tasks

Anthropic's latest models, including Claude Opus 5.5, are distinctly different from previous versions. They are designed for more autonomous workflows, centered around agents, and cover areas such as design, coding, research, and auditing. These models are optimized to handle complex, multi-step tasks. Effective prompts with older models are less so with these new models, as the latter are capable of bridging certain gaps in task understanding.

Seven rules and a prompting framework announced

Anthropic recommends a set of seven rules to achieve better results with Opus 5.5. An official guide presents these prompt-writing habits and announces a ready-to-use framework that consolidates the seven rules at the end of the presentation.