Question

A financial analyst wants Claude to evaluate whether loan applications meet a set of five specific eligibility rules. Early tests show Claude sometimes skips rules or gives a verdict without checking each one. The analyst wants to improve reasoning quality but keeps getting inconsistent results when simply saying 'think about it carefully.' Which chain-of-thought refinement is most likely to improve accuracy?

Accepted Answer

Replace the vague instruction with guided steps that tell Claude to evaluate each of the five rules one at a time before stating a final verdict

Answer

Lower the temperature to 0 so Claude produces the same output every time regardless of reasoning depth

Answer

Add 'be accurate and thorough' to the end of the prompt to emphasize the importance of the task

Answer

Increase max_tokens so Claude has more room to write, which will automatically make it reason through every rule