<context> — when and how to use it in Claude prompts

Separates static, descriptive background from active instructions and from the user's question.

When to use <context>

• Telling Claude about the user, the domain, or the broader conversation state.
• Providing situational details that affect tone or depth but aren't instructions.

When not to use it

• Don't put retrieved documents here — use <document>/<documents> instead, which Claude is more strongly trained to treat as evidence.
• Don't put few-shot examples here — use <example>.

Minimal example

<context>
The user is a kindergarten teacher and unfamiliar with software development jargon.
</context>

Full example

<instructions>
Answer the user's question. Calibrate vocabulary to the context.
</instructions>

<context>
The user is a senior backend engineer with 15 years of experience.
They are deeply familiar with relational databases but new to vector search.
The product is an internal RAG tool over Confluence pages.
</context>

<question>
Should we re-rank results before sending them to the LLM?
</question>

Common mistakes

• Stuffing the entire conversation history into <context> when it would be clearer as turns in the messages array.
• Mixing instructions and context — Claude will sometimes follow context as instructions if no <instructions> block is present.