Claude Code Output Styles: What Changed and How to Set One Now

An output style changes how Claude responds, not what it knows. It rewrites part of the system prompt to set a role, a tone, and a response format, and that change applies to every message in the session, not just the next one. Use an output style when you find yourself re-prompting for the same voice or format every turn, or when you want Claude Code to act as something other than a software engineer for a while, like a writing assistant or a data analyst.

This is a different job than CLAUDE.md. CLAUDE.md tells Claude about your project - the conventions, the stack, the rules for this specific codebase. An output style tells Claude how to talk and how to structure what it hands back, regardless of which project it is in. Keep the two separate: project facts go in CLAUDE.md, communication style goes in the output style.

Run /config and select Output style to pick from a menu. Your choice is saved to .claude/settings.local.json at the local project level. If you would rather skip the menu, set the outputStyle field directly in a settings file, for example outputStyle: "Explanatory".

Output style is part of the system prompt, and Claude Code reads the system prompt once at session start. That means a style change only takes effect after you run /clear or start a new session - switching mid-conversation without clearing does nothing.

A custom output style is a Markdown file: frontmatter for metadata, then plain instructions appended to the system prompt. Save it at one of three levels - your user directory at ~/.claude/output-styles for every project, your repo at .claude/output-styles for just that project, or a managed policy directory for an organization-wide style. The file name becomes the style's name unless you set one in the frontmatter.

Decide on keep-coding-instructions first. Set it true when you are changing how Claude communicates but still want it coding the same way it always does, like a style that leads every explanation with a diagram. Leave it out entirely when Claude is not doing software engineering at all.

This is the habit we teach members to run after every Claude Code update, not just once when they set the tool up: open /config and click through every menu, including Output style, before you start real work. Claude Code ships fast, and commands get renamed or removed between versions - /output-style is the clearest recent example. A two-minute sweep after an update catches a broken habit before it costs you an hour mid-build on a client project.

It is a small habit, but it is the difference between finding out a command changed from a blog post after the fact, and finding out from your own /config menu before it ever slows you down.

A custom output style is worth setting up the first time you catch yourself typing the same formatting request over and over. If you are pairing with a non-technical client and re-explaining every diff in plain language, write an Explanatory-style variant that always leads with the plain-language version before the technical detail, and keep-coding-instructions true so the actual build quality does not change. Set it once per client folder and every session in that project inherits the tone automatically.