All three fixes, written out.

Here is the full text of [document name]. Read it, then [what you want]. If anything looks garbled from the copy and paste, tell me which part instead of guessing at it.

Reports, contracts, transcripts, decks. Open the PDF, select all, copy, paste the plain text into the chat instead of attaching the file. Anthropic's docs say a PDF gets its text extracted AND every page converted into an image, and that each page typically runs 1,500 to 3,000 tokens before that image cost lands on top. The formatting, the logos, the scanned letterhead: none of it is the part you needed. If you have to keep the file, split it and send only the pages that matter.

Stop where we are. Write me a handoff document I can paste into a brand new chat. Include, in this order: 1) the goal in one sentence, 2) the constraints and requirements we have settled on, 3) what we already tried and why it did not work, 4) the current state of the work, 5) the exact next step. Plain text, no preamble, no summary of this conversation. If something is still unresolved, write "unresolved" instead of guessing.

Any chat where you are on the fourth round of corrections. Anthropic's guidance is direct about it: longer conversations that trigger automatic context management consume more of your usage limit, and they suggest starting a new conversation if you are approaching your limit in a long chat. So take the good part with you. Paste the handoff into a new chat and open with: "Picking this up from a previous session. Here is the handoff. Start at the next step."

Standing instructions for this project. Who I am: [role, business, who I serve] What we work on here: [the recurring job] Output format: [bullets, tables, word count, no preamble] Tone: [plain, direct, no hype] Always: [the two or three rules you repeat most] Never: [the two or three things you keep correcting] When you do not have enough information, ask me one question instead of guessing.

Paste this into the project instructions field of a Claude Project, fill in the brackets, and every new chat in that project starts already knowing. Projects are available on free accounts too, capped at five. Bonus: files you upload to a project get cached, so only the new parts count against your limit each time you reference them. On Claude Code the same idea lives in a CLAUDE.md file at your project root, loaded at the start of every session. Run /init to generate a starter, keep it under 200 lines, and write rules specific enough to check ("use 2-space indentation" beats "format code properly").