A practical guide to output styles in Claude Code

Ever feel like you’re wrestling with your AI assistant to get it to talk exactly how you want? One minute you need a straight-up, no-fluff answer, and the next you’re looking for a patient mentor to walk you through a tricky problem. Anthropic’s new feature for Claude Code, Output Styles, gives developers a fresh way to take control of the AI’s personality and how it communicates.

This guide will break down what output styles Claude Code actually are, how the built-in and custom options work, and what you can do with them. We’ll also get real about their limitations for business teams and show you how a platform like eesel AI is built to handle those specific challenges.

What are output styles Claude Code?

Output Styles are a feature in Claude Code that lets you swap out the main agent’s entire system prompt. You can think of the system prompt as the AI’s core job description. By changing it, you’re essentially changing the AI’s personality, tone, and how it tackles tasks, all without it forgetting how to read files, run scripts, and help you code.

An illustration of the various output styles Claude Code offers to developers.

It’s like switching your AI’s job title from "Efficient Coder" to "Patient Mentor" or "Direct Technical Writer" with just a single command.

This is a bit different from other ways you might have tried to customize Claude before. For instance, this isn’t the same as using a "CLAUDE.md" file, which just adds some project-specific context for the AI to read on top of its default instructions. Styles replace the whole instruction set. It’s also different from sub-agents, which are more like separate, specialized AIs you can call on for specific, one-off tasks. Styles change the personality of the main AI you’re chatting with.

How the built-in output styles work

Claude Code comes with three styles ready to go, each designed for a different kind of workflow. Let’s take a look at what they do and when you might want to use them.

The default style: Speed and efficiency

This is your classic Claude Code experience. It’s built for speed, focusing on getting software engineering tasks done as quickly and cleanly as possible. It gets straight to the point, generates code, and doesn’t waste time with extra chatter. It’s the perfect mode for experienced developers who just need a fast, direct coding partner.

The explanatory style: Narrated reasoning

Ever find yourself staring at AI-generated code and wondering why it chose that particular solution? The explanatory style is for you. In this mode, Claude Code offers up "Insights" as it works, explaining its design choices, the trade-offs it weighed, and why it’s using certain patterns from your codebase. This is super helpful when you’re getting up to speed on a new codebase, trying to understand a complex architectural decision, or need to generate clear explanations for documentation or pull requests.

The learning style: Collaborative pair-programming

The learning style takes it a step further and turns your AI into a hands-on mentor. It doesn’t just explain its work; it actively pulls you into the process. You’ll often see it leave "TODO(human)" markers in the code, prompting you to fill in small, strategic pieces yourself. This mode is great for onboarding junior developers, learning a new programming language, or just tackling a tough problem in a more guided, interactive way.

Feature	Default Style	Explanatory Style	Learning Style
Primary Goal	Efficient task completion	Understanding the ‘why’	Collaborative learning
Communication	Concise, direct, code-focused	Includes "Insights" and rationale	Interactive, includes prompts for user
Best For	Experienced developers	Codebase exploration, PRs	Onboarding, learning new skills
Unique Feature	Minimalist output	Educational explanations	"TODO(human)" code markers

The power of custom output styles

The built-in styles are handy, but the real fun begins when you start creating your own. By running the "/output-style:new" command, you can transform "Claude Code" into "Claude Anything," tailoring the AI’s personality for jobs that go way beyond software development. This gives anyone a way to do some deep system prompt customization without needing API keys or a complicated dev environment.

A look at the terminal integration for output styles Claude Code.

How to create custom output styles

The process is pretty straightforward. You can either run the command "/output-style:new" followed by a description of the personality you’re aiming for, or you can create a Markdown file right in your "~/.claude/output-styles" (for global styles) or ".claude/output-styles" (for project-specific styles) folder.

A custom style file has a simple structure with a name, a description, and the new system prompt. For instance, some users on Reddit have shared styles to make Claude a bit less sycophantic and more to the point:

"`markdown

---

name: Direct Objective

description: Clear, professional communication without excessive deference or sycophantic language

---

Direct Objective Communication Style

Maintain a professional, objective tone that focuses on facts and solutions.

Core Communication Principles

Objective Acknowledgment: When the user makes valid points, acknowledge them using neutral language like "That’s correct" or "Valid point."

Direct Problem-Solving: Focus on identifying issues and providing solutions without unnecessary embellishment.

"`

Custom styles beyond coding

With custom styles, the sky’s the limit. You can spin up specialized agents for all sorts of roles:

• Content Strategist: An agent that can look through your Markdown files, suggest ways to improve the structure for readability, and make sure everything aligns with your brand’s voice.

• UX Researcher: A persona that frames all feedback around user impact, asks good questions about user motivations, and suggests the right research methods for the job.

• Business Analyst: An AI assistant that can process data files, generate reports using specific industry terms, and help you track project metrics against your KPIs.

<protip text="There's a bit of a debate in the prompt engineering world about whether it's better to use negative instructions (like, "don't say 'you're absolutely right'") or just stick to positive ones (like, "use phrases such as 'that's correct'"). Anthropic's docs say negative constraints are fine, but some engineers feel that providing only positive examples of what you want leads to more consistent results. It's probably worth experimenting to see what works best for your custom styles.">

Limitations for business teams

While Output Styles are fantastic for individual developers, they start to show their limits when you try to plug them into integrated business workflows like customer support or internal helpdesks. The whole system is built for a technical user, and it’s missing some key things needed to work well in a team setting.

• It’s made for developers: The whole experience is based in a command-line interface. You can’t really expect a non-technical support agent to manage Markdown files and run terminal commands just to get help with a customer ticket.

• It doesn’t connect to business tools: You can create a "Support Agent" style, but it can’t actually do much. It can’t look up an order in Shopify, check a subscription status, or tag a ticket in Zendesk unless a developer builds and maintains a custom API connection for every single action.

• There’s no team management or reporting: Styles are managed by individuals or within specific projects. There isn’t a central place to manage prompts across a support team, keep the brand voice consistent, or track the AI’s performance and accuracy.

• Setting up real-world actions is a huge task: To get a custom style to act like a real AI support agent, a developer would have to write the perfect prompt and build a whole ecosystem of tools and webhooks just to let the AI take basic actions. What starts as a simple prompt quickly turns into a major engineering project.

Claude Code pricing

Claude Code isn’t a separate product; it’s part of the paid Claude Pro and Max subscriptions. While there’s a free version of Claude for basic chat, you’ll need to upgrade to get to the more powerful models and developer features like Output Styles.

Plan	Price (Monthly)	Price (Annual)	Key Features
Free	$0	N/A	Basic chat and analysis
Pro	$20	$200 ($17/mo)	More usage, access to more models, includes Claude Code
Max	From $100	Contact Sales	5, 20x more usage than Pro, early access, priority access

Just a heads-up: Pricing can change. It’s always a good idea to check the official Anthropic pricing page for the latest info.

This video explains how output styles Claude Code can be used to trasnform the AI into any type of agent while retaining its core capabilities.

For business workflows, a dedicated AI platform is the answer

The very limitations of Claude Code for business are why purpose-built platforms like eesel AI exist. eesel AI is designed from the ground up to be a powerful, accessible, and integrated AI solution that anyone on your team can actually use.

• Move from manual prompts to managed workflows: Instead of every team member juggling their own prompts, eesel AI gives you a central dashboard to build, test, and deploy AI agents. You can define a single, consistent AI persona and a set of actions that your whole team can use.

• Get out of the CLI and into your helpdesk: eesel AI works where your team already does. It plugs directly into tools like Zendesk, Freshdesk, Intercom, and Slack, so there’s no command line to learn. Your support and IT staff can start using it immediately.

• Go from custom tools to one-click integrations: Forget about building API connectors from scratch. eesel AI’s AI Agent comes with over 100 one-click integrations. This lets it look up order details, process returns, escalate tickets, and perform other real-time actions right out of the box, with zero developer time needed.

• Switch from guesswork to confident rollouts: Instead of just hoping your new prompt works, eesel AI gives you a simulation mode. You can safely test your AI agent on thousands of your team’s past tickets to see exactly how it will perform, get solid forecasts on resolution rates, and calculate your potential ROI before it ever talks to a live customer.

Output styles Claude Code: The right tool for the job

Output Styles are a seriously powerful and flexible feature that makes Claude Code an even better sidekick for developers. They give you a new level of control, letting you shape your AI assistant’s personality to fit any task, from coding and debugging to research and writing.

But when it comes to business applications like customer service or internal support, the developer-first design, lack of business integrations, and missing team management features become real roadblocks.

That’s where a dedicated, self-serve platform like eesel AI comes in. It’s built to solve these exact problems, providing a powerful and fully integrated solution that can be deployed in minutes, not months. It gives your team the AI tools they need without the engineering headache.