Anthropic's alignment research found that explaining the reasons behind good behavior generalizes better than showing examples of it. The same idea makes your prompts and skills far more reliable.
In a 2026 post, Anthropic described training Claude to behave well in tricky situations. Training only on demonstrations of the right action helped a little. But when they rewrote the same data to include the reasoning — why one choice was better than another — performance jumped, and it generalized to situations the training never covered.
Strikingly, a small dataset that taught principles matched the results of a much larger one built on examples — roughly a 28x efficiency gain. The takeaway: the reasons matter more than the actions.
You're not training models, but the same dynamic shows up every day. A prompt that's only a list of steps works until reality differs from your script — then Claude follows the steps literally and produces something wrong.
When you include the goal — why you're doing this and what a good outcome looks like — Claude has something to reason from when it hits a case your steps didn't anticipate. The intent transfers; a bare recipe doesn't.
Put the purpose at the top of any skill or prompt, before the steps. One or two sentences: what this is for and what good looks like. Then list the instructions underneath as usual.
This costs you a single line and changes how Claude handles everything that follows. It's the cheapest reliability upgrade you can make.
## Why this exists Give the reader a clear weekly picture so they can plan next week. Clarity matters more than completeness. ## Steps 1. ...
With the intent stated, Claude makes fewer brittle, overly literal mistakes and shows better judgment on the edge cases — the inputs that don't match your examples. You'll find yourself writing fewer exceptions and special cases, because the principle already covers them.
Do both: state the why and give the steps. Anthropic found the combination is the strongest of all.
A SKILL.md template that puts the 'why' first, so Claude reasons from intent — based on Anthropic's research finding.