Question

A developer is building a chatbot that generates short product descriptions. They want to ensure Claude never produces a reply longer than roughly 150 words, both to control cost and keep the UI clean. Which Messages API parameter should they configure for this purpose?

Accepted Answer

Set an appropriate max_tokens value to cap the length of the generated response.

Answer

Set temperature to a low value so the model produces shorter outputs.

Answer

Add the word count to the system prompt and rely on it exclusively to enforce the hard limit.

Answer

Reduce the context window size so the model has less room to generate text.