Long Work and Your Own System - Claude Cheat Sheet

How long work fails - decisions reopening, constraints fading, scope creeping, results unverified - and the tools against it: staged handoffs, a state block, scope fences and reversibility gates. Then assembling the five layers into your own system with an evaluation set.

On the sheet:

- The chain: split a long job into stages, hand off in writing

- How long work fails: the four ways: reopened calls, fading limits, creep, unchecked

- The state block: reprint what is settled at the top of every reply

- Hold the scope: fence the task so it does not quietly grow

- Verify, do not assume: ask what was checked, assumed, and could not be

- Autonomy and the gate: reversibility sets how much runs without you

- Your own system: the five layers: context, architecture, examples, cost, delivery

- Which layers you actually need: add a layer when a symptom appears

- The evaluation set: real inputs with the outputs you judged correct

- Testing a change, not feeling it: one change, run the set, keep or revert

Two A4 pages, printed front and back, sized to print once and keep beside you while you work. Written in short sentences and plain English, for readers whose first language is not English and clearer for everyone else because of it.

It pairs with the Long Work: Chaining and Agents and Capstone: Your Own Claude System books, so you can learn each idea in full and then revise it here in two pages.

Every product fact on this sheet - every plan, price, limit, setting and menu - was checked against Anthropic's own published documentation before the file was made. This is an independent study guide, not affiliated with, authorised by, or endorsed by Anthropic. Instant PDF download. By M.R. Sterling.