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Best System Prompt for Building Claude Math Tutor with Hints?
Use a targeted system prompt to configure Claude as a math tutor bot that delivers hints instead of answers, ensuring guided learning—learn the right setup for effective AI tutoring in your app.
Question
You’re building a math tutor bot. You want Claude to give hints instead of direct answers. What should you use?
A. Setting a very low word limit
B. Using all capital letters in your messages
C. A system prompt explaining the tutor role
D. Asking users to be more specific
Answer
C. A system prompt explaining the tutor role
Explanation
A system prompt is the most effective way to control Claude’s behavior in a math tutor bot, as it defines the AI’s role, guidelines, and response style at the start of the messages array, instructing it to provide hints, step-by-step guidance, or Socratic questioning instead of direct answers. For example, a prompt like “You are a patient math tutor. Always give helpful hints and encourage the student to solve problems themselves, never providing full solutions” sets persistent behavioral expectations across the conversation, leveraging Claude’s instruction-following capabilities for consistent, role-aligned outputs. Options like low word limits risk incomplete hints, while capitalization or user specificity requests fail to enforce the desired tutoring methodology reliably.