CLSkills
PERSONA

Makes Claude respond as a specific expert. The specificity is everything.

Category: Power Commands

Before / After

Without PERSONA

Act like a database expert.

With PERSONA

PERSONA: Postgres DBA with 15 years at Stripe. Cynical about ORMs. How do I make my queries faster?

What changes in Claude's response

Generic personas ('act like an expert') don't change Claude's output much. Specific personas with biases and history change everything. The Stripe DBA will recommend EXPLAIN ANALYZE before anything else, will mention pgbouncer, will tell you to drop your ORM if it's hiding the SQL. The specificity gives Claude permission to have opinions.

When NOT to use PERSONA

Don't PERSONA for tasks where opinions don't help. 'PERSONA: math teacher' won't make Claude better at arithmetic.

Codes that stack with PERSONA

PERSONA is one of 120 tested prompt prefixes. The full cheat sheet has before/after examples, warnings, combos, and 10 workflow playbooks.

See the full cheat sheet — from $5

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