The Technical Use Case Screen Walk-Through
Explore how to approach a technical use case screen in Anthropic's FDE interview by clarifying customer requirements, designing an effective tool layer, defining a safe initial system version, and maintaining reliability on complex tasks. This lesson guides you through using Claude responsibly and demonstrating a deployable AI solution that meets real-world constraints.
The technical use case screen gives a candidate a customer scenario and asks how they would deploy Claude to solve it. The conversation covers MCP tools, reliability on long documents, and sometimes the candidate’s use of Claude itself during the call. A strong candidate drives the conversation and decides what to ask, what to build first, and what to leave for a later version.
A strong answer follows a recognizable path. It clarifies the problem, designs the tool layer, commits to a bounded first version, explains how the system stays reliable, and uses Claude in the room with care. The walkthrough below works through one realistic prompt along that path, the way a strong candidate would say it out loud.
A logistics company wants Claude to answer its analysts’ questions about carrier contracts and to draft dispute emails to carriers. The contracts live in a document store, and disputes are tracked in a ticketing system. How would you build this?
Clarifying before designing
The prompt does not specify several requirements that would influence the system architecture. Starting with an architecture diagram before clarifying those requirements risks building a solution around unsupported assumptions. Start with five questions that can significantly affect the design, and confirm the answers rather than relying on assumptions.
Who will use the system? Determine whether the users are internal analysts, carriers, or customers. Their workflows affect response-time requirements, review procedures, and the level of validation required before presenting results.
What data is available, and who can access it? Confirm the contract formats, volume, update frequency, and retrieval requirements. Identify which user's ...