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Project ContextAdvanced
Get Architecture Advice with Trade-offs
Frame architecture questions with your constraints to get opinionated, trade-off-aware recommendations instead of generic patterns.
architecturetrade-offsdecision
The Strategy
Generic architecture advice is useless. Embedding your specific constraints (team size, stack, scale) forces Claude to reason about your situation rather than giving textbook answers.
prompt.txt
<context>
<project>
- B2B SaaS, ~50 enterprise customers
- Next.js frontend, Node.js API, PostgreSQL
- Team of 4 engineers, strong TypeScript skills
- Must support multi-tenancy (row-level security)
</project>
</context>
<task>
We need to add a real-time notification system.
Evaluate these options given our constraints:
1. Server-Sent Events (SSE)
2. WebSockets with Socket.io
3. Long polling
4. Dedicated service (Pusher/Ably)
</task>
<output_format>
For each option: pros, cons, fit for our constraints (1-10), recommendation.
End with a single clear recommendation with reasoning.
</output_format>You might also need
Project ContextIntermediate
Provide a Repo Map for Large Codebases
When your codebase is too large to paste, generate a file tree and include it as context so Claude understands your project structure.
repo-mapfile-treearchitecture
View snippet
PromptingIntermediate
Elicit Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
Tell Claude to "think step by step" or use `<thinking>` tags to get more accurate answers for complex problems.
reasoningchain-of-thoughtanalysis
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