Claude Opus 5 prompt advice: cut instructions instead of adding more

heypearlai · x · 2026-07-29

Final take: cut, don’t add

The core advice is to delete constraints and boundaries, not stack more instructions. If your Opus 5 prompt is longer than your Opus 4.8 prompt, you probably moved in the wrong direction.

The post is the final part of a prompt-engineering thread about making Opus 5 behave better in agent loops: keep the prompt shorter, tighter, and more restrictive only where needed.

Related event: Prompting Tips and Pitfalls for Claude Opus 5(4 posts)→

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