The best Claude Code tips are often about the shape of the request, not the task. Two Anthropic engineers shared theirs.
1. Ask for one item at a time
Doug Safreno used to open a long session with "what's outstanding for my review?" He got back 15 vague items and had to ask about each one. Now he asks:
really concretely and simply, give me one outstanding item at a time in rough priority order.
The order is often wrong. But each item arrives with the right context and ends in an a-or-b question, so he flies through them.
Try it: when you need decisions from a long session, ask for one at a time, ending in a choice you can answer in a word.
2. Show it the pace you want
Andrew Edstrom's long-running session kept playing it safe: a few small changes, then a stop to ask for input. Telling it to take on bigger pieces didn't help.
So he had it read a colleague's write-up of a big, bold migration they had shipped. The next morning he woke up to 133 PRs.
Try it: if a session is too tentative, don't repeat the instruction. Show it an example of how you want the whole project run.
