Ask Claude for rewrites

If Claude gives a response that is close to, but not quite what you're looking for, you can ask Claude to rewrite it.

In Slack this can be as simple as telling Claude to "Try again" after it gives an unsatisfactory response. (It will of course perform better at the rewrite if you give it more direction like "Please rewrite that to include more detail.") Unless you send a /reset command first, your message is added to the existing context window. This allows Claude to process its previous answer as part of the prompt.

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Avoiding hallucinations

When using Claude-in-Slack, don't send a /reset command before asking for a rewrite unless you intend to explicitly pass Claude the previously generated response in your prompt. Claude tends to make up irrelevant text when it is asked to rewrite something but does not actually have text to rewrite.

You must always include the previously generated text in your prompt if you send it through the API (including calling the CLAUDE or CLAUDEFREE functions with Claude in Sheets). Here's an example prompt template:

Human: Here's a paragraph:
<paragraph>
{{PARAGRAPH}}
</paragraph>

I'd like you to rewrite it using the following instructions:
<instructions>
{{INSTRUCTIONS}}
</instructions>

Please put your rewrite in <rewrite></rewrite> tags.

Assistant: <rewrite>

For lower volume use cases the paragraph to be rewritten can just be pasted in place of {{PARAGRAPH}}. To automate this you can set up a prompt chain so that Claude's response to a previous prompt gets substituted for the {{PARAGRAPH}} placeholder in this prompt.

If you are using Claude in Sheets it's possible to set up rows in your Sheet such that in each row a different set of instructions is substituted for the {{INSTRUCTIONS}} placeholder. You can generate multiple types of rewrites at once this way.