Improving the quality of life for companies and the great people that work in them. Certified Scrum Trainer, Organizational Consultant, Leadership Mentor
Philadelphia, PA
Joined March 2009
- Tweets1.4K
- Following34
- Followers506
- Likes779
Bob Schatz retweeted
Today we’re bringing skills to Copilot for Excel, giving teams a new way to scale their expertise across every workbook.
Just what we needed, more work!
Both OpenAI and Anthropic just released official prompting guides.
Both say the same thing.
Your old prompts don’t work anymore.
But for opposite reasons.
Claude Opus 4.7 stopped guessing what you meant. It does exactly what you type. Nothing more, nothing less.
Vague instructions that worked on 4.6? They now produce narrow, literal, sometimes worse results.
Not because the model got dumber. Because it stopped compensating for sloppy thinking.
GPT-5.5 went the other direction. OpenAI’s guide literally says: “Don’t carry over instructions from older prompt stacks.”
Legacy prompts over-specify the process because older models needed hand-holding. GPT-5.5 doesn’t. That extra detail now creates noise and produces mechanical output.
Claude got more literal.
GPT got more autonomous. Both now punish the same thing: prompts written without clear thinking behind them.
One developer on Reddit captured it perfectly after analyzing hundreds of community posts. The complaints tracked almost perfectly with prompt specificity.
Precise prompts got better results on 4.7. Vague prompts got worse. The model didn’t regress. The prompts did.
OpenAI’s new framework is “outcome-first prompting.” Describe what good looks like. Define success criteria. Set constraints. Then get out of the way. The model picks the path.
Anthropic’s framework is the inverse: be surgically specific about what you want, because the model won’t fill in your blanks anymore.
Two different architectures. Two different philosophies.
One identical conclusion: the person writing the prompt is now the bottleneck, not the model.
Boris Cherny, the engineer who built Claude Code, posted on launch day that even he needed a few days to adjust. That post got 936 likes.
Meanwhile, Anthropic increased rate limits for all subscribers because the new tokenizer uses up to 35% more tokens on the same input.
The model is more expensive to run lazily. Cheaper to run precisely.
The models are converging in capability. The gap between good and bad output is no longer about which model you pick.
It’s about the 2 minutes of structured thinking you do before you type anything.
That thinking system is the skill. The prompt is just what it produces.
Bob Schatz retweeted
You don't need the $100 Claude plan.
Instead, you just need these 9 (free) fixes:
1. Shrink Your Files.
Open a Google Doc. Paste the text from your PDF.
Download as .md file format & upload that instead.
A 15-page PDF = 45,000 tokens.
The same text as the .md file = 2,000 tokens.
2. Plan First. Build Last.
Open Claude Chat. Prompt: "Help me plan a [financial model]. Ask me questions first."
Then paste the final plan into Cowork and prompt, "Build exactly this."
You just saved 1/10th of the cost.
3. Let Claude Ask You.
Stop writing long prompts. Prompt this instead: "I want to [TASK] to [SUCCESS CRITERIA]. Ask me questions using AskUserQuestion before you start."
Then just select answers. Clicking costs almost zero tokens. Your 500-word prompt costs 500.
Full guide here: ruben.substack.com/p/how-to-…
But here's what's really draining your credits:
4. Edit Your Messages, Don't Resend.
Click "Edit" on your last message to Claude.
Fix the mistake there. Hit Save. Claude regenerates without stacking a new message on top.
Every "no wait, I meant..." doubles your cost.
5. Summarize Every 15 Messages.
After having an entire chat with Claude. Prompt: "Summarize this entire conversation into a brief."
Copy it & paste it as the 1st message in a new chat.
You just compressed 105,000 tokens into 500.
6. Switch Models Before You Start.
Click the model dropdown. If the task takes Claude under 30 seconds to answer, pick Haiku or Sonnet. Only pick Opus for deep, multi-step work. This saves you 3–5x per message.
7. Use Projects, Not Uploads.
Go to Projects. Create one. Upload files there once.
Every new chat inside that Project reads it without re-tokenizing. Stop uploading the same contract to 5 separate chats.
8. Turn Off Extra Features.
Go to the tools panel. Turn off Web Search.
Turn off connectors. Turn off Extended Thinking.
Only turn on what this specific task needs.
Idle features burn credits silently.
9. Batch 3 Tasks Into 1 Message.
Instead of sending "Summarize this" then "List the key points" then "Write a headline" - send all three in one message.
Three messages = three full context reloads.
One message = one reload.
Access the free guides to copy my full system:
✦ 23-fixes breakdown: ruben.substack.com/p/how-to-…
✦ The infographic cheat sheet: how-to-ai.guide
Send it to the one who keeps hitting Claude's limits.
Bob Schatz retweeted
Streaming Now: Eagles Open Practice Live Q&A xitter.gq/i/broadcasts/1mnxeRAqr…
Bob Schatz retweeted
Huge shout out to the US Government Accountability Office and my buddy SCRUM BOB @AgileInfusion and the team that put this awesome AGILE GUIDE together! You really should check it out. It has some answers to a lot of problems som…lnkd.in/gME47U3T lnkd.in/gTFH_K7r
Bob Schatz retweeted
Our upcoming course Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) Workshop is now confirmed to run! In this 2-day course taught by
@AgileInfusion review agile product development methods and behaviors of a PO. Use code VIRTUALSCRUM50 for $50 off enrollment!
purchase.cprime.com/40243phx… #CSPO
Bob Schatz retweeted
Our first tutorial from the Summer Curriculum is presented by @AgileInfusion a Certified Scrum Trainer, on the practice of the agile transformation. #tmatlc2020 #agile #leadership
Learn more: buff.ly/2TCXIta
Bob Schatz retweeted
Check out Dr. Bob Schatz teaching a Certified Scrum Master training course. In January, members of PhoenixTeam took Bob’s course at our offices. Most recently, while exercising safe social distancing practices, we have switched to virtual trainings with Bob.
Bob Schatz retweeted
So we have become a little more nerdy at our house but I think @AgileInfusion and @ESCOUTE1 would be proud of me. Scrum at home.
Bob Schatz retweeted
"If I'm really going to do what I'm good at, I have to be prepared to move on every 3-4 years." - @AgileInfusion on being a change agent.
Teams often treat you as an antigen when you push for change.
#preach #strummingmylifewithhiswords
Bob Schatz retweeted
Most programmers want to write good code; but believe that their employers don’t want good code. They are wrong.
Most employers want the benefits of good code; but don’t know that good code provides those benefits.
We do. So, we should write good code.
Bob Schatz retweeted
Struggling with system complexity? Join @unclebobmartin's new Clean Architecture course & start dramatically improving dev productivity throughout the life of any software system. All thanks to the universal rules of software architecture!
More info: ed.gr/bgcrr
Spent 2 exciting weeks In the UK teaching and coaching the great teams at Grass Valley. Great job Mates! 🇬🇧 — at Grass Valley, A Belden Brand facebook.com/125342974165691…
