# XML Tag Reference for Claude Prompts

> Every common XML tag for prompting Claude: instructions, context, example, thinking, answer, document, source, and more.
>
> Source: https://claudexml.com/tags/ · Last updated 2026-05-25

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# XML tag reference for Claude prompts

    Every common XML-style tag used in Claude prompts. Click through for definition, use cases, and runnable examples.

    There is no fixed list of "valid" tags — Claude treats any well-named XML-like tag as semantic structure. The tags below are the ones Anthropic's documentation and the community use consistently, in roughly descending order of frequency.


## All tags


      <instructions>
### instructions
Top-level directive for the model.

      <context>
### context
Background information the model should know but not act on.

      <example>
### example
A single demonstration of input → output.

      <examples>
### examples
Wrapper for multiple <example> tags.

      <thinking>
### thinking
Scratchpad for Claude's chain-of-thought.

      <answer>
### answer
The model's final answer, isolated for extraction.

      <document>
### document
A single document supplied for the model to read.

      <documents>
### documents
Wrapper for multiple <document> tags.

      <source>
### source
Provenance metadata for a document.

      <format>
### format
Specifies the required shape of the output.

      <role>
### role
Defines a persona or perspective for the assistant.



Cite this page

`XML Tag Reference for Claude Prompts. claudexml.com. https://claudexml.com/tags/`