Approve the Outline Before Claude Drafts

A long-form pattern where you have Claude produce a detailed outline — sections, the point of each, the order — and you edit and approve that outline before it writes a single paragraph.

Structural problems are almost free to fix in an outline and expensive to fix in a finished draft, where reordering means rewriting transitions and cutting prose you're attached to. Approving the skeleton first means the draft is built on a structure you've already validated, so revision is about wording, not architecture. It also stops Claude from committing thousands of words to the wrong shape.

Anything long or argued — an essay, a report, a proposal, documentation. The longer the piece and the more its structure carries the argument, the more the outline pays off.

Short pieces where the structure is obvious, or exploratory free-writing where you want to discover the shape by drafting. Don't outline a three-sentence reply.

I want to write <piece> for <audience>, making the point that <thesis>. Before drafting, give me a detailed outline: each section, one line on what it argues, and the order. Show how the sections build to the thesis. Don't write prose yet — I'll edit the outline, and you'll draft to the approved version.

For a strategy memo, Claude's outline reveals it planned to put the recommendation last, buried under analysis. You move it to the top and cut a section, approve, and the draft lands right — instead of you reverse-engineering that fix out of five finished pages.

Have Claude annotate each outline section with its intended length and the one idea it must land. The annotations keep the draft proportioned — no runaway section, no idea that quietly goes missing — and give you a checklist to review the draft against.

• Approving an outline you skimmed, then being surprised when the draft faithfully follows a structure you didn't really vet.
• Letting Claude draft and outline in one go, which defeats the cheap-revision benefit.
• Outlining in so much detail that it becomes the draft — keep it to structure and intent, not sentences.