Domain 5Projects, Context & Advanced Configuration
Custom Styles
TL;DR
Formatting presets — "Concise," "Explanatory," "Formal" — that control the look and feel of Claude's responses: sentence length, use of headers, level of detail.
Definition
Formatting presets — "Concise," "Explanatory," "Formal" — that control the look and feel of Claude's responses: sentence length, use of headers, level of detail. Styles are separate from Instructions. Instructions define what the AI knows and how it behaves; Styles control how the final output is formatted and presented.
Exam Context
A trap answer claims Custom Styles and Project Instructions are the same thing. They are not. Styles control formatting; Instructions control behaviour and content.