Review season: 7 Claude prompts before your performance review
Paste in your notes from the year and the things you shipped, and these 7 prompts find your wins, back each one with evidence and get you ready for the conversation. Prompt 1 is the one from the reel, run there on sample notes; prompts 2 to 7 take you from a list of wins to a self-review, practice questions and next period's goals.
What you need
A Claude account. Any plan works for pasted text. File uploads and connectors depend on what your plan includes.
Your raw material from the period: notes, old weekly updates, project lists, messages where someone thanked you, and any numbers you've saved.
Your company's review form or its questions, for prompt 3.
Check your company's AI policy before you paste work documents, and don't paste anything you wouldn't put in an email to a vendor. For prompt 7, check your HR policy too: notes about a person on your team are personnel information.
The 7 prompts
Paste your material first, then the prompt, and run prompts 1 to 6 in the same chat. Change the words in [brackets].
1. Find your wins and flag the unbacked ones
Use it a few weeks before your review, while there's still time to find the evidence.
Find every win in here, attach the result to each one, and tell me which ones I can't back up yet.The reel version stops there. Add this line under it so Claude flags gaps instead of filling them: "Quote the line each result came from. If a win has no result in my notes, write 'no result in the notes' instead of guessing one."
2. Attach evidence to each win
Use it when you have the list of wins and need to know what proves each one.
For each win on that list, tell me what evidence would back it up: a number, a document, a message, a date or a person who saw it. Use only what's in my notes, and quote the line for each piece of evidence you find. Where there's nothing, write "missing" and suggest where I might find it, like a dashboard, a ticket or an email thread, labeled as a suggestion. Don't invent results, and don't round any number up.3. Draft the self-review
Use it when your wins have evidence and the form is due.
Draft my self-review using only the wins that have evidence. The review form asks: [paste the questions or sections]. Answer each one in first person and plain language, with the specific result and the line of my notes it came from. Keep my verbs: if my notes say I helped with something, don't write that I led it. Keep each answer under [150] words. Leave out any win marked "missing," and tell me which ones you left out. If a question can't be answered from my notes, write [I need to add this] instead of filling it in.4. Play your manager and ask the hard question
Use it once the draft is done, to find the weak spot before your manager does.
Now play my manager, [name], who is [their role] and cares most about [their priorities]. Read my self-review the way they would, then ask me the question I'm dreading: the one about the weakest or least backed part of my year. Ask 1 question at a time and wait for my answer. After each answer, tell me whether it would hold up and what was missing. Base your questions on my review and notes, and tell me when you're guessing what my manager thinks. If I give a number in an answer that isn't in my notes, point it out.5. Prepare your answers
Use it the week of the review, so you're not answering the hard questions for the first time in the room.
List the 5 hardest questions my manager could ask about this review, based on the gaps and weak spots in my notes. For each one, draft a short answer I could say out loud, using only facts from my notes, with the line each fact came from. If I don't have a good answer yet, say so and tell me what I'd need to find before the meeting.6. Goals for next period
Use it after the review, or before it if your form asks for goals.
Based on this review, draft 3 goals for my next [6 months / year]. Each goal needs what done looks like, how I'd measure it, and a date. Tie each one to something in my notes, like a gap, a win to build on or something my manager asked for, and quote the line. Where I'd need a baseline number I don't have, write [baseline?] instead of making one up.7. A review of someone on your team
Use it when you're the manager writing someone else's review. Start a new chat for it, and use initials if your HR policy asks for that.
I'm writing a performance review for [name or initials], who is [their role]. My notes on their work this period are below. Draft the review using these sections: [paste the sections]. Be fair and specific: every strength and every area to improve needs an example from my notes, with the line it came from. Describe what they did and its result, and leave out personality and guesses about their reasons. If a section has no evidence in my notes, write "no evidence in my notes" so I can find some before I write it. Then list anywhere my notes look one-sided, like covering only recent months or only problems.
[paste your notes]The mistake to avoid
Letting Claude promote your verbs. You helped with the migration, the draft says you led it, and your manager knows who led it. A single upgraded verb makes the rest of the review harder to believe. Prompt 3 tells Claude to keep your verbs, and you should still read every sentence against your notes before it goes in the form.