Question

You are building a customer support chatbot with the Messages API. A user has asked three questions across a session, and Claude has answered each one. The user now types a follow-up that says 'What about the second option you mentioned?' To ensure Claude can correctly reference its earlier reply, how should you structure the request?

Accepted Answer

Include the full alternating sequence of prior user and assistant messages in the messages array, followed by the new user message.

Answer

Send only the latest user message and rely on Claude to remember the prior turns automatically.

Answer

Concatenate all prior turns into a single system prompt and send only the new user message in the messages array.

Answer

Send only the assistant's previous responses in the messages array so Claude can see what it said before.