What You Need to Know
Overhead is anything you type, explain or attach at the start of every similar conversation. Optimising means making your work with Claude cost less time or usage. To measure the overhead, you time it and count how often it recurs. This objective covers how you work with Claude, not the business process around it (Domain 4.2).
This lesson uses one made-up example throughout: a marketing coordinator at the head office of a retail chain. She drafts promotion briefs with Claude. A brief tells the stores which products are on promotion and at what price. She uses one Project for all her work chats: briefs, supplier emails and meeting summaries. Each conversation about a brief opens with how the chain plans and prices a promotion, plus the same price list and catalogue. This repeated opening text is her preamble. Timed, it is about ten minutes, three or four times a week.
Measure First
Optimising differs from fiddling because it starts from a measured number. Her measured ten minutes justify moving the preamble to a permanent place. "Writing briefs feels clunky" justifies nothing yet except timing it. This is the honesty rule from Domain 4.5, applied to your own workflow. Improve what you have observed, and claim no saving that you did not measure.
The Repeated-Overhead Test
Within a single conversation, Claude remembers the context from earlier messages. The coordinator's preamble recurs because she types it again at the start of each new conversation about a brief. Recurring overhead belongs somewhere it only has to exist once.
The places for overhead reach different sets of chats. So first ask which chats need the text. Then choose the place.
| What repeats | The coordinator's example | Where it goes | Which chats it reaches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Context and rules that stay the same | Her promotion pricing rules | The Project's instructions | Every chat in that Project |
| Reference material | Her price list | The Project's knowledge | Every chat in that Project |
| One request in nearly the same words each time | Her request for a brief from the planning notes | A request template | Only the chat where she pastes it |
| The steps and format for one kind of task | The layout of every brief | A Skill | Any chat where the request matches the Skill |
| Preferences for all your work | "Use British spelling" | Instructions, in Settings | Every chat in the account |
A request template is the text of a request that you save, for example in a document. Each time, you paste it into a new chat and change the details, such as the product names and dates.
Project instructions keep the same context across many conversations in one Project. So why not put the request for a brief there? Project instructions apply to every chat in that Project. The request for a brief is one task, not a rule for every chat. In the instructions, it would also reach her chats about other work, such as supplier emails. A request template reaches only the chat where she pastes it.
Instructions in Settings apply to every conversation in your account. Use them only for preferences that are true of all your work.
Where Skills Fit
A Skill is a set of instructions that tells Claude how to do one kind of task, for example its steps, format and tone. Anthropic's Help Center says Skills can "define repeatable behaviors you activate on demand". A Skill is available in any chat, inside or outside a Project. Claude loads a Skill when your request refers to the Skill's name or description.
- Who creates a custom Skill: you or your organisation. The easiest way is to describe the task to Claude in a chat. Claude then writes the Skill.
- Who turns a Skill on: you turn each Skill on or off with the switch at the top of its page, under Customize > Skills. Skills also need the setting named Code execution and file creation to be turned on. On Team and Enterprise plans, an organisation Owner controls Skills and that setting. If the retail chain has one of those plans, its Owner controls both for the coordinator.
- When to use a Skill: use a Skill for the steps or format of one kind of task that you want in any chat. Use Project instructions for context that every chat in one Project needs. Anthropic's Academy says "projects store knowledge, skills perform tasks".
- Styles: Anthropic has deprecated the older Styles menu. Skills now do its job. The Help Center names Skills as the feature for customising how Claude formats and delivers its responses.
For the coordinator, a request template is enough while the request is short. If she wants every brief in the same layout, in any chat, she can make a Skill for briefs.
Batch Related Requests, and Name Your Files
Two documented methods take minutes to apply. The first method is batching. Anthropic's usage guidance says to group multiple related tasks or questions in a single message rather than splitting them across exchanges. It also says to be specific and concise, because Claude can need clarification after vague queries. The coordinator asks for the brief and its cover email in one message. Anthropic's article on usage and length limits adds that longer conversations which trigger automatic context management consume more of your usage limit. So long working chats are untidy and also use more of your usage limit.
The second method is file names. In a large Project, retrieval decides which material Claude uses. Anthropic states that well-named files help Claude understand and retrieve the right information. Anthropic states this alongside two other practices: referencing documents by name and grouping related documents in the same Project. The coordinator renames "pl_v3_final" to "Promotion price list". Renaming a file so a stranger could tell what it contains is a quick optimisation that Anthropic recommends.
Match the Settings to the Work
Running everything at one setting causes problems with both routine work and deep analysis. Higher effort produces more thorough responses but takes longer and uses more of your usage allowance. Routine reformatting at maximum effort spends usage on depth that it never uses. Deep analysis that is rushed at a low setting is too shallow for the task. A pattern of slow, over-worked responses to routine work, such as her reformatting of a brief, is itself the measurement. That measurement shows a mismatched setting.
The Proportion Rule
Some overhead is not worth removing. A twenty-minute task the coordinator does once a year does not justify a Project, a request template or an afternoon of setup. The saving never repays the setup, and whatever she builds becomes out of date between uses. Recognising the optimisation that costs more than it saves is as professional as spotting the one that saves more.
In the exam
Most questions depend on whether the option in front of you has a number. The exam tests whether you notice, from a symptom or a measurement, where an optimisation belongs. This includes which piece of a repeated preamble belongs at which level. Sometimes an optimisation belongs nowhere. In this domain's hardest questions, the right answer is to decide, on the numbers, not to optimise. Choosing model and effort belongs to Domain 3.3, and writing the configuration belongs to Domain 5.
Key Concept
In 7.3 questions, look for the measurement. The right answer moves measured, recurring overhead to a place where it exists once, or declines a setup that costs more than it saves. Wrong options optimise something untimed, such as an unmeasured reorganisation, or they optimise everything indiscriminately.
Exam Traps
Sweeping workflow changes proposed on the basis of a feeling
Without a measurement there is no baseline, no way to know whether the change helped, and no honest claim to have saved anything. Time the work first; measure before you reorganise.
Building a Project or request template for a task done twice a year
Setup and upkeep that exceed the overhead they remove are a cost that looks like an improvement, and the setup becomes out of date between uses. The proportion rule says leave the rare task alone.
Raising effort or switching model to speed up a workflow whose overhead is a repeated preamble
Neither effort nor a model change gives Claude context it was never given, so the preamble would still be needed. A Project’s instructions and knowledge hold it once. Higher effort also takes longer and uses more of your usage allowance.
Practice Scenario
A sales coordinator at a travel agency starts every conversation about a corporate client the same way: explaining what the agency does and which travel services it sells, then attaching the same three documents. Timed, that comes to about ten minutes, three or four times a week. Each January she also spends twenty minutes preparing the annual licence renewal form for the agency. She will put effort only into what her timings show is costing time, and only where the saving outweighs the set-up. What is the most appropriate optimisation?
Build Exercise
Time the Overhead, Then Place It or Leave It
What you'll learn
- How to measure repeated overhead honestly
- How to place each piece of overhead at the level where it exists once
- How to use file names as a way to improve retrieval
- How to apply the proportion rule and decline an optimisation
- For one week, note what you type, explain or attach at the start of every similar Claude conversation, and time it honestly
Why: Optimisation starts from a measurement; the week of notes turns a feeling of clunkiness into numbers you can act on.
You should see: A short list of recurring overhead items, each with a rough time cost and how often it recurs.
- Apply the repeated-overhead test to each item: context that stays the same belongs in a Project’s instructions, recurring reference material in its knowledge, a near-identical weekly request in a request template you adapt, and the steps or format of one kind of task in a Skill
Why: Each kind of overhead has a level where it only has to exist once, and placing it wrongly means either repeating it anyway or putting it where it does not apply.
You should see: Each overhead item labelled with its destination: instructions, knowledge, request template, Skill, or the account-wide Instructions in Settings.
- Check the names of any files already in your Projects, and rename anything a stranger could not identify from its filename alone
Why: Retrieval decides which material Claude works from in a large Project, and well-named files are a documented input to getting the right one.
You should see: File names that state what each document contains, replacing versions, initials and abbreviations only you understand.
- Find one repeated task you run at a mismatched setting: routine work at maximum effort, or deep analysis rushed at a low setting, and match the setting to the work
Why: Settings mismatched to the work waste time and usage in one direction and quality in the other; a pattern of over-worked routine responses is itself a measurement.
You should see: One task moved to a setting that fits it, with a note of what changed in speed or depth.
- Pick your rarest repeated task and do the proportion arithmetic: if the setup would cost more than a year of the overhead it removes, leave it alone and note that you decided to
Why: Declining an optimisation on the numbers is the discipline that separates professional optimisation from adding setup that costs more than it saves.
You should see: A one-line record of the task, the arithmetic, and the deliberate decision not to optimise it.
Sources
- What are projects? — Anthropic
- Understanding Claude's personalization features — Anthropic
- Working with skills — Anthropic Academy
- Teach Claude your way of working using skills — Anthropic Academy
- Introduction to projects — Anthropic Academy
- Usage limit best practices — Anthropic
- How do usage and length limits work? — Anthropic
- Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) for projects — Anthropic
- Change the model, effort, and thinking settings — Anthropic
- Claude Certified Associate – Foundations Exam Guide — Anthropic. The measure-first and proportion rules draw on the exam guide's objective and standard practice. The batching, file-naming, instruction and settings levers come from the Help Center articles above.