Advanced Claude — Book 2 · Examples That Steer

There is a point where adding another instruction stops helping — the rules contradict each other, the edge cases multiply, and the output still isn't right. That is the point to stop describing and start demonstrating. Why three to five examples work and one is often worse than none. The three properties every set needs, and the coverage grid that takes five minutes and finds the gap you'd never have noticed. Choosing examples from your failures rather than your successes. Tagging a set so it isn't processed as work. Counter-examples for near-misses, with one named reason each. And the accidental pattern — the thing true of all your examples that you never meant to teach, which is invisible because no rule states it.