What makes a good prompt #
A prompt is the message you write to your AI. No formula, no secret language, no command you have to memorise. You write in full sentences, the way you would explain something to a person sitting next to you who is about to do the work for you.
The difference between a message that lands and one that disappoints comes down to four ingredients. Knowing them means you write better instructions in your first minute than most people manage after six months of practice.
The goal
What should be different afterwards? Not “make the page nicer”, but “the headline should get shorter”. A goal you can check is a good goal.
The context
What does your AI need to know about you so it does not have to guess? Your trade, your town, your customers. Two sentences are enough, but they have to be said.
The boundary
What should stay untouched? This is the ingredient beginners forget most often and the one that saves the most trouble. A boundary turns a rebuild into a correction.
The result you want
In what form do you want the answer? Three options to choose from, a list with file and line, a proposal before anything is built. Say so and you get it.
A weak and a strong instruction
Weak sounds like this: “Make the home page better.” The sentence gives no goal, no context, no boundary and no desired result. Your AI has to guess four things, and it guesses generously. Afterwards half the page is different and you no longer know what used to be there.
Strong is the same wish with all four ingredients. It is longer, but you write it once and save yourself three rounds of corrections.
Shorten the headline on the home page to six words at most. We are a joinery in [your town] and we build fitted wardrobes to measure. Leave the rest of the page untouched and show me three options to choose from before you change anything.
Every sentence in this chapter contains placeholders in square brackets, such as [your town] or [company name]. Put your own details there and delete the brackets with them. If a bracket stays in, it ends up on your website 1:1.
One more thing takes the pressure off: you do not have to phrase it perfectly. A message is the start of a conversation, not a form you have to hand in without mistakes. Whatever is missing, you add in the next message.
Your very first message #
Open the unpacked folder in Claude and write the message below. It deliberately changes nothing on your website yet. It makes sure your AI first reads what is in your project: the guideline CLAUDE.md, the knowledge folder and the seven skills. What is inside them is covered in the chapter The seven skills.
Please read the CLAUDE.md file, the knowledge folder and the skills in this project first. Then explain to me in five sentences, without jargon, what kind of website this is, which pages exist and what of it is invented. Do not change anything yet.
The answer is your map. You see how many pages there are, which person in them is invented and what has to be replaced before launch. From now on your AI knows the project and stops guessing.
The most common beginner's mistake is opening with a change request. An AI that has not read your project yet will build something plausible that misses the system. The sentence “Do not change anything yet” at the end of a message costs you a minute and saves your afternoon. It belongs on every message where you want to understand first.
Next you get the website running on your own machine, so you see every change immediately. Almost every Template is a project with an src folder and needs two commands in a terminal. The few others have a finished index.html in the main folder that you simply open in your browser. The whole first day is covered in the chapter Getting started.
- npm install · once, fetches the building blocks
- npm run dev · starts the preview
- localhost:4321 · the address you open in your browser
Get the website running on my machine. I am on [Windows or Mac] and have never used a terminal. Tell me step by step what to type and where, and wait for my reply after each step.
Round 1: who you are #
The rebuild runs as a conversation in four rounds. Your AI asks one question at a time and builds something you can look at after each round. You do not need to know how to run that conversation, you only need to know what to bring to it. That is exactly what the next four sections cover.
Round 1 has the greatest effect. Your name, your town and one sentence about your offer produce the logo, the page titles, the header, the home page and the footer on every page. Start here, even if nothing else is settled yet.
Want to work all this out before your first prompt: the free Website DNA quiz asks you exactly these four rounds as questions and then hands you a file you can simply give to your AI.
Let's start with round 1. My name is [your name] and I run [company name] in [your town]. We do [your offer in one sentence]. Build that in, replace the invented person from the Template everywhere and then show me the home page.
The second detail in this round is worth more than your name: who you are there for. A website that wants to speak to everyone speaks to no one. Tell your AI who lands on your site and what brings them, and the home page gets a headline those exact people recognise themselves in.
My customers are [who they are], they come to me when [occasion], and their biggest worry about it is [worry]. Write the headline and the opening sentence of the home page so those exact people recognise themselves. Three options, each headline eight words at most.
Answer the way you would explain it to a customer on the phone, at a comfortable length. Your own words produce better copy than a list of keywords, because your sentences already carry your tone. Your AI takes care of the phrasing afterwards.
Round 2: hard facts #
There is nothing to phrase here, only to transfer. Company name including legal form, address, phone, email, opening hours and your planned domain. These details appear in more places than you can see, so you hand them over in one message.
Here are my hard facts. Company [name including legal form], address [street, postcode, town], phone [number], email [address], available [hours], domain [address]. Put them everywhere, including the footer of every page, the contact page and the machine-readable details for search engines. Anything I have not given you, do not invent, put it on a list of open points instead.
The last sentence matters most. It turns a gap into a note instead of an invented phone number. Whatever is still missing today, you add later in a single message.
After handing over these details it is tempting to have the imprint generated straight away. That does not happen, and deliberately so: it would be legal advice. Both pages ship as empty placeholders ready to take your own reviewed text. How to get that text is covered in the chapter Imprint and privacy.
Round 3: your offer #
This is the longest round and the one that decides how many enquiries you get. It says what a visitor gets from you, how it works and what it costs. Take your time and write two sentences per service in your own words. Your AI trims and polishes afterwards, but it cannot polish something you never told it.
I offer [number] services. First [title]: [two sentences about it]. Second [title]: [two sentences about it]. Third [title]: [two sentences about it]. My pricing works like this: [pricing logic]. Replace the Template's services entirely with mine and watch for number words like “eight services” that may sit in body copy and in the footer.
Prices belong on the website, even if you can only give a range. An open starting price filters enquiries before they cost you time, and it reads as more confident than any wording that talks around the number.
Say what you do not do, too
The most underrated paragraph on any website. Saying clearly what you are not responsible for brings fewer unsuitable enquiries and makes you look more assured, not smaller. Two or three sentences are enough, phrased kindly.
These are things I do not do: [list]. For those I refer my customers to [alternative]. Turn that into a short passage on the services page, three sentences at most, friendly and without putting anyone down. Also remove the service [name from the Template] from the website completely, including links to it.
Round 4: people and images #
The last round is about everything that carries trust: your face, real quotes, numbers you can back up. The rule is simple. What you have goes in. What you do not have comes out.
I have a photo of myself at [path or file name] and two real customer quotes with written approval. First [quote] from [name, company]. Second [quote] from [name, company]. Swap out the Template's portrait, add the quotes and then tell me where else the old image was being used.
If you are just starting out, you have neither quotes nor project numbers. That is normal and no disadvantage, as long as you empty those places instead of filling them. A website without testimonials reads as new. One with invented testimonials reads as dishonest the moment someone asks.
I have no customer quotes, no project numbers and no case examples yet. Remove those sections completely instead of leaving placeholders, and close the gaps in the layout cleanly. Then suggest what I could put in those places without claiming anything.
The portraits in your Template show people who never agreed to advertise for you. Every image with a recognisable face gets replaced with one of your own, or the section goes. Motifs without people can stay. The detail is in the chapter Copy and content.
The tone of your website #
Every Template comes with a defined tone, held as a rule in the knowledge folder. Your AI reads it before every round of writing. If it does not suit you, you change the rule rather than the individual sentences, otherwise you end up with a website in two voices.
Adjectives fail when you describe a tone. “Professional and modern” is a wish everyone interprets differently. What works reliably are examples: one sentence you like, and one you would never say.
This is how I want to sound. I like this sentence: [sentence]. I would never say this one: [sentence]. I address my customers as [formal or informal]. Add that as a rule in the tone of voice file in the knowledge folder, show me the new version and then rewrite only the home page to match.
- An example beats an adjective. Two sentences in the right tone carry further than any description. Use sentences you have actually said.
- How you address people belongs in the same message. Formal or informal touches every sentence on the website, including buttons, forms and error messages. Half-finished switches are spotted instantly.
- One page first, then all of them. Let the new rule work on the home page first. If you like the result, release the rest. If you do not, you have lost one page instead of twelve.
Changing, adding and removing pages #
From here on you are in everyday work. Usually it is one page that is not quite right, one that is missing, or one that has to go. The same ground rule covers all three, and it is the most important one in this chapter.
Five wishes in one message produce five half results, and if one of them goes wrong you cannot tell which. Write one wish, check the preview, write the next. It feels slower and is noticeably faster by the end of the day.
Create a new page for [topic]. Use the structure of an existing page as the model, add it to the navigation, to the footer and to the index file for search engines, and give it its own title and description. Tell me in three sentences what you are creating first and wait for my go-ahead.
When removing a page, the page itself is not the problem. Everything still pointing at it is: the menu, the footer, links in the middle of your copy. So here the search comes first and the deletion second.
I am taking the page [address] off the website. First search the whole project for every reference to it and show me the list without deleting anything. Then remove the page along with its entries in the navigation, the footer and the index file, and set up a redirect to [target address].
When a page of its own is actually worth it, which four places have to be updated afterwards and how blog posts are created is covered in detail in the chapter Copy and content.
Touching the design #
Colours, type sizes and spacing live in one central place the whole website draws from. For you that means you describe the effect, your AI changes the central value and the website follows everywhere. What sits behind that is explained in the chapter Adjusting the design.
The accent colour should become a [colour in words, for example warm forest green]. Change it in the central place, carry light mode, dark mode, the favicon and the styleguide with it, and check the contrast in both modes afterwards. Show me two colour options to choose from first.
You do not need a colour code. A description in words is enough, and it often gives a better result, because your AI picks the right shade for light and dark mode itself. If you have a brand colour from your logo, name it with its code and it gets used exactly.
The body copy is too small for me to read. Raise the base font size by one step in the central place so every page follows, and do not introduce a second typeface. Then show me the home page at 390 and at 1440 pixels.
If you dislike a colour in only one spot, the fix is still central. “Make this one headline darker” is the first step towards a patchy website where nobody later remembers why which value sits where. The sentence that helps is “Change that in the central place, not here”.
Getting ready for search #
Every page needs its own title and its own description. That is the text people see on Google before they have ever seen your website. Your AI can set both for every page at once, all it needs is your offer and your location.
Set a separate title and description for every page. We are [your offer] in [your town]. Titles 60 characters at most, descriptions between 120 and 155 characters, actively phrased and ending with the next step. Show me the complete list before you enter it.
- One topic per page. Two pages on the same topic get in each other's way, and neither of them wins.
- Your town belongs in there if your customers are local. It goes in the title, in the headline and in the machine-readable details, spelled the same way everywhere.
- Your customers' questions make your best articles. What you get asked on the phone all the time is what other people type into search. You know those answers by heart.
How to find your search terms, set internal links and show up in local results is covered in the chapter SEO and visibility.
Checking before you launch #
Before your website moves onto your domain, there is exactly one message you should not skip. It proves that nothing is left of the invented person, the invented numbers and the invented quotes, and it catches the small faults along the way.
We are going live soon. Search the whole project for leftovers of the example identity: invented names, company names, phone numbers, addresses, example domains, numbers and testimonials. Also check for broken links, missing image descriptions, weak contrast, missing page titles and sideways overflow on narrow screens. Give me a list with file and line, sorted by urgency.
Work through the list until it is empty, then run the sentence a second time. The complete route to your own address, with hosting, domain and the padlock, is in the chapter Going live.
When your AI gets it wrong #
This happens to everyone, and it is no reason to start over. Almost always your instruction left more room than you thought. Three moves resolve most cases.
Steer rather than restart
Say in the same conversation what is off and how it should be instead. Your AI still holds the context. A new conversation loses it.
Roll it back
The last change can be taken back on its own. That is the calmest way back when a page suddenly looks different from what you expected.
Get smaller
If something goes wrong twice, the instruction is too big. Split it into the smallest sensible unit and only take on the next one afterwards.
Take back the last change to [file or area] and leave everything else as it is. Then tell me in two sentences what looks different again now.
That was too much at once. We are now doing only [one thing]. Touch [file or section] and nothing else, everything else stays untouched. Show me the result before you go any further.
Before you kick off a colour change, a full pass over the copy or the removal of several pages, back up your project folder. Then the way back is always a matter of seconds, whatever the result looks like. Your AI makes the copy for you.
Before we start the big rebuild, make a complete backup of my project folder with today's date in the name, and tell me where it is and how I restore it.
When a conversation gets very long, the answers get vaguer. Then have the current state summarised in a few sentences and start a new one. Your project stays exactly as it is, and the guideline and the skills are still inside it. Which skill covers what and how to call it by name is in the chapter The seven skills.
The ten sentences you always need #
These ten sentences do not belong to any one step, they belong to all of them. With these in your head you can handle any task this chapter does not cover. Here too, replace what is in square brackets with your own details.
| What you want | What you write |
|---|---|
| To understand first | Read the files involved and tell me what you intend to do. Do not change anything yet. |
| To find a place | Where is [detail]? Give me the file and line and tell me whether it appears anywhere else. |
| To draw a boundary | Change [section or file] and nothing else. Everything else stays untouched. |
| To choose rather than accept | Show me three options with one sentence of reasoning each before you commit. |
| To see the difference | Show me the old and the new side by side before you apply it. |
| To actually understand it | Explain that to me without jargon, as if I had never built a website. |
| To get back to the last state | Take back the last change and leave everything else as it is. |
| To be sure nothing broke | Check that everything still holds after the change: the build, both screen widths, both colour modes, the error console and the internal links. |
| To have nothing invented | Anything you do not have from me, do not invent. Put it on a list of open points and ask me afterwards. |
| To close out the day | Summarise what we changed today and what is next. Keep that in the project. |
You know the sentences, now for the content. Where the copy of your website lives, how the four rounds run in detail and what happens to proof that is not yours is covered in the chapter Copy and content.