Claude · Foundations
Facts tell Claude what's true. Standing instructions tell it how to behave.
A knowledge base gives a workspace the right facts. Standing instructions are the separate layer that decides how it acts on them: what tone to use, what it should never do, and how to handle a question it can't answer confidently. Without this layer, correct facts can still come out wrong.
Direct answer
What standing instructions actually cover
Tone and voice
Formal or casual, how you refer to customers, phrases your business does and doesn't use.
Boundaries
What it must never do: promise a price it isn't authorized to quote, offer legal or medical guidance, send anything without review.
What to do when it's unsure
Flag the gap and ask, rather than fill it with a plausible-sounding guess. This is the rule that prevents most bad output.
Format defaults
How a draft should be structured by default: length, greeting style, whether to include a signature block.
Why it's a separate layer
Correct facts, delivered wrong, are still a problem
A workspace can have the exact right pricing rule in its knowledge base and still produce a draft that's too casual for a legal client, or too clinical for a homeowner who just had a pipe burst. The facts were right. The behavior wasn't. Standing instructions are what fixes that, separately from what the workspace knows.
Where it fits
Set once, referenced by every skill after it
Standing instructions get set alongside the knowledge base in the first working session, and every skill built afterward inherits them. That's why a follow-up email and a service summary, built in different sessions months apart, still sound like the same company wrote both.
Questions
FAQ
How is this different from just describing our tone once in a prompt?
A one-time prompt is forgotten the next conversation. Standing instructions persist across every skill and every session, so you're not re-explaining your rules every time.
Can standing instructions change over time?
Yes, the same way a style guide gets updated. If a rule stops fitting how the business actually operates, it's revised.
What happens if two instructions conflict?
That's usually a sign the underlying policy itself is unclear. Working through the conflict is often more useful than the instruction change itself.
Next step
Let's write down the rules your team already follows by instinct
A short call to talk through your tone, your boundaries, and what should never go out without a second look.