How to use XML tags in Claude prompts

If you look closely at the prompts on this site, you will notice small tags like <draft> and <notes> around the text you paste in. They are not decoration. Anthropic's own prompting guidance recommends XML-style tags for structuring prompts, and in practice it is one of the simplest habits that makes answers more reliable.

What the tags do

A prompt usually mixes two things: your instructions, and material you want Claude to work on. When both are plain paragraphs, the line between them is blurry. Does "make it shorter" belong to your instructions, or is it part of the email you pasted?

Tags remove the doubt:

Summarise the customer email below in two sentences, then draft a reply.

<email>
Hi, I ordered the blue lamp three weeks ago and...
</email>

Now there is no way to confuse the email with the task.

There are no magic tag names

Claude has no special list of tags. <email>, <contract>, <my_notes> all work. Pick names that describe the content, and use the same names when you refer to them: "Using the figures in <report>, answer the question in <question>."

Four places where tags help the most

1. Long pasted material. Documents, transcripts, code, data. Put each one in its own tag. If there are several, give them different names or add a number.

2. Examples. Wrap sample outputs in <example> tags and say what to copy from them: "Match the tone of the example, not its content."

3. Keeping rules apart from context. Background goes in one block and rules in another. When you reuse the prompt next month, you only edit the block that changed.

4. Asking for a structured answer. You can ask Claude to use tags in its reply: "Put your reasoning in <thinking> tags and the final email in <email> tags." That makes the useful part easy to find, and easy to extract if you are working with code.

A full example

You are a careful contract reviewer.

<contract>
[PASTE THE CONTRACT]
</contract>

<concerns>
We are a small agency. We care most about payment terms,
who owns the work, and how either side can end the agreement.
</concerns>

List every clause that touches our concerns. Quote it, explain
it in plain language, and rate the risk as low, medium or high.
If the contract says nothing about one of our concerns, say so.

Common mistakes

• Forgetting to close a tag. Always add the closing </contract>.
• Tagging everything. A three line prompt does not need structure. Use tags when there is pasted material or when there are several distinct parts.
• Nesting too deep. One level is usually enough. Two at most.

Try it

Pick any prompt from the collection and look at how the tags separate your material from the instructions. Then add a pair of tags to the next long prompt you write, and compare the answers.