jared hebb ~ %

Free tool

Tell Claude what you actually want

Most of what goes wrong with Claude goes wrong in the first message. You know what you want, you type a sentence and a half of it, and Claude fills in the rest with guesses. This asks you the questions worth answering, then writes the message for you, including the parts almost nobody thinks to add. Everything happens on this page, and nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Answer what you can and skip the rest. Anything you leave blank is simply left out.

What are you here to do?
The basics
What you want made

The middle question is the one that matters most. It is also the one people skip, and skipping it is why you get something that technically works and is not what you asked for.

What is going wrong

These four answers are the difference between Claude guessing and Claude knowing. If there is a message on screen in red, copy it in exactly, all of it, even the parts that look like nonsense.

How much you want to be asked
Anything it should stay away from

Your message

This updates as you answer. Nothing here leaves your browser.


        

          
          
        

      

    


    

      
What to do with it

      
Hit Copy, open Claude, and paste it in as your first message. That is the whole thing. You do not need to explain it or introduce it.

      
Expect Claude to come back with questions before it starts. That is the message working, not failing. Answer them and let it go.

      
Why this beats typing a sentence

      
Claude is good at doing what you asked and bad at knowing what you meant. Given half a description it does not stop, it guesses, and it guesses confidently. Nearly every "it built the wrong thing" story starts with a first message that was one line long.

      
Some of your message was written for you, because it is the part people never think to include. Telling Claude to ask instead of guessing is the big one. Saying up front how much it is allowed to decide on its own is the other. Both do more work than anything you typed.

      
Once this is going well, the next thing worth doing is writing down the rules you want followed every time, so you stop repeating yourself. That is what the house rules page is for.