spent 3 months testing claude prompts for a guide, 3 things that surprised me

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PromptEngineering

I run a small one-person research lab where i test claude prompt codes and skill files. ran a stupid amount of tests for a guide i was writing. three things genuinely changed my workflow. where you put a scope sentence matters more than how you word it i used to spend ages tweaking the wording of "review only the database logic" type sentences. then i ran the same wording at the start of a prompt vs at the end and the difference was huge. token output stayed about 30% tighter when scope went fir