The Tireless Apprentice

Give each of the chapter's three duties a tag of its own: <goal> for what finished work looks like, <limits> for the sources it may trust and the things it must never do, <checkpoint> for where it has to stop and show you. Put any long material you are supplying - an exported invoice list, a circular, last year's itinerary - at the very top, and the instruction at the very bottom, because the final instruction is the one followed most reliably. Turn web search on yourself; without it you get what the model remembers rather than what is currently true, which on fees and timings is the difference between a plan and a disappointment. Ask for the plan as ordinary chat text and the report as an Artifact, so you argue with the plan and edit the document. When a prompt finally works, its tags belong in a Project's instructions.

From the book Turn on web search so Claude can look up current information and show where it found it. For long research, ask it to put the final report in an Artifact - a document beside the chat that you can edit and download.

• <goal>, <limits>, <checkpoint> - and then the instruction, last.
• Turn web search on; without it you get memory, not facts.
• Long attachments at the top, your instruction at the bottom.
• Ask for [unverified] markers in the prompt, not afterwards.
• Report in an Artifact; plan as chat text you can argue with.

<who_i_am>
B.Sc. Agriculture student in Pune. This is a seminar paper, so my professor will follow the citations.
</who_i_am>

<goal>
Two pages I can read aloud: the central and state subsidies for drip irrigation available to a small farmer in Maharashtra - which schemes, who qualifies, what share is paid, and the route to applying.
</goal>

<limits>
Sources: government portals and recognised agricultural universities. A coaching note about a scheme is not the scheme, and neither is a news article about it.
Give the publication or last-reviewed date of every source. Flag anything older than two years as possibly superseded.
Where two official pages state different subsidy percentages, show me both and name both pages. Do not average them and do not pick the likelier one.
</limits>

<checkpoint>
Stop before you research anything. Your first reply is a numbered plan only - the questions you will chase, in order, and the sites you expect to use. Then wait for me.
</checkpoint>

<when_you_cannot_find_something>
Write it down as a gap, marked [not found]. A gap I can take to my professor; a plausible invented figure I cannot.
</when_you_cannot_find_something>

<task>
Give me the plan. Once I have approved it, carry it out and put the two-page report in an Artifact, so I can trim it to my word limit myself.
</task>

<travellers>
My wife and I, both in our late sixties, setting out from Ludhiana. We tire on long walks and we do not want a crowded day.
</travellers>

<errand>
Four days in Haridwar and Rishikesh, early February. Find the options. I will choose and I will book.
</errand>

<budget>
About ₹40,000 for everything - travel, rooms, food, local transport. Keep a running total and tell me the moment a choice breaks it.
</budget>

<forbidden>
No booking. No reservation. No payment page. No holding a seat or a room, however free the cancellation. If a step cannot be taken without committing me to something, stop and tell me instead.
</forbidden>

<what_to_find>
Trains from Ludhiana, with the arrival hour judged for two people who sleep badly on a train.
Rooms a short, flat walk from Har Ki Pauri - and whether the building has a lift or only stairs.
Current temple and Ganga aarti timings, with the date on the page you read them from.
</what_to_find>

<honesty_rule>
Mark as [unverified] every fare, timing and distance you could not confirm on a page you can name. I will check those at the counter myself.
</honesty_rule>

<task>
First, three or four lines of your own reasoning about which of the two towns we should sleep in and why - I want to argue with you before you build anything. Then the day-by-day plan with the running total, as an Artifact we can keep editing together.
</task>

[Paste your invoice list here, at the very top - one line per invoice: customer, date, amount, and "paid" or "unpaid" or "not sure". Long material goes first and the instruction comes last, where Claude follows it most reliably.]

<my_shop>
Tiles and sanitaryware, Lucknow. These are customers I want to keep, not debtors I am finished with.
</my_shop>

<how_to_get_the_list>
If I have set up and permitted a connection to my mail, read the last three months of sent invoices and build the list yourself. If I have not - and what is on offer differs by app and keeps changing - work only from the list pasted above. Tell me which of the two you did.
</how_to_get_the_list>

<what_i_want>
A table: customer, invoice date, amount, days outstanding today.
Then one reminder per unpaid customer - four or five lines, simple English, naming that invoice's own date and amount.
For anyone marked "not sure", a polite enquiry rather than a reminder. I would rather ask twice than accuse once.
</what_i_want>

<absolute_limit>
You do not send. You draft; I read every line and send it from my own hand. Include no payment link, no UPI id and no account number in any draft - I will add those myself if I want them there.
</absolute_limit>

<task>
Build the table and the drafts together in one Artifact, so I can correct the wording in place.
</task>