Directing
The first prompt is a brief, not a specification. Three worked examples, and what each of the four refinement channels is actually for.
A specification lists what the thing contains. A brief names who it is for, what they are doing when they meet it, and the one thing it cannot fail at. Claude can invent the contents. It cannot invent your reader. Give it the reader.
The comparison below is the same three jobs, written both ways. Flip the control and watch what changes — not the length, the information.
Reading
Reading
Reading
The four channels, and what each is for
Once a first version is on the canvas, precision lives here. Using the wrong channel is the second commonest mistake — usually re-prompting from scratch when a comment would have done it.
Conversation
Global and structural moves. "Cut this to eight slides." "Make it feel more editorial and less SaaS." "The whole thing is too loud."
- Reach for it when
- The change is about the whole, or you cannot point at any single element.
Inline comments
A note in the margin, attached to the thing it is about. "This CTA is buried." "Why is this the biggest thing on the page?"
- Reach for it when
- You can point at the problem but cannot name the fix — spatial critique, the way you would talk over someone's shoulder.
Direct text edits
No round trip, no interpretation, and no chance of Claude improving your headline into something else.
- Reach for it when
- You already know the exact words. Never spend a prompt on copy you have written.
Generated sliders
Claude produces live controls for the properties in play — spacing, colour, scale, density — and you move them and watch.
- Reach for it when
- You will know it when you see it. Continuous properties are for feeling your way to, not for specifying.
Fix one instance, then ask Claude to apply it across the whole design. Correcting a card, a slide or a section once and propagating it is faster than any global prompt and far more accurate — because you have shown the answer instead of describing it.
Corollary: when something is wrong everywhere, fix the clearest example first. Do not argue with the system in the abstract.