Notes on Collaborating with Claude Opus

INTENT : Share elements of my mental model regarding collaboration with Claude Opus models. Not intentionally scoped to a specific model version, but my experience is generally with the latest model version available (4.7 as of time of writing items 1-4 on 5/22/26) Accompanying an instruction with the why significantly improves: Observed rate of the instruction being visibly salient to Claude Quality/nuance of instruction execution (baselined on 1a) A standing instruction to break replies into labeled sections and sub-sections improves ergonomics of reference to specific points: Claude reliably follows references to "A3" or "B5". This is much more ergonomic for me over the course of a session compared to "on that point about blah..." Claude actively uses the references as handles (in contrast to labeling sections but otherwise not interacting with the labels.) Negatively-framed instructions increase salience of the prohibited action. Depending on the instruction itself, the net effect