Finance Narrative Integrity Layer

Purpose

Use Claude to maintain a single coherent story behind financial numbers as inputs change, by (1) reconciling narrative claims to a source of truth, (2) reviewing the narrative like a board reader, and (3) drafting recurring variance commentary in an established voice.

When to use

• You ship a board deck where numbers refresh up to the last minute and multiple stakeholders edit in parallel.
• You publish a monthly financial review that must keep consistent voice and conventions month over month.
• You inherit or open a model you don’t fully understand and want an initial driver/structure sanity check.

Inputs

• A board deck or narrative doc (slides or document).
• A single source of truth for the numbers (model output tables, dashboards, or approved extracts).
• Prior-month commentary (for voice/convention consistency).

Instructions

1) Reconcile claims to a single source of truth

1. Provide Claude the narrative document/deck and the latest source-of-truth tables.
2. Use the reconciliation prompt template: templates/reconcile-claims.md
3. Apply fixes in the narrative and rerun whenever numbers move.

2) Read the narrative like a board member

1. Use the board-reader prompt template: templates/board-reader-review.md
2. Resolve contradictions, missing context, and places where the narrative assumes internal knowledge.

3) Draft first-pass variance commentary in an established voice

1. Provide the month’s table and prior-month commentary.
2. Use the variance draft template: templates/variance-commentary-first-pass.md
3. Edit the output for judgment, nuance, and stakeholder alignment.

4) Separate projects by audience (memory hygiene)

• Keep separate Claude projects for distinct audiences (e.g., board deck vs. monthly review) so tone and conventions remain stable.
• Commit important documents to project memory.

5) Extract decisions from long cross-functional threads

• When a long thread produces a key conclusion, ask Claude to extract the conclusion and reasoning and store it where you will reuse it.

Examples

• Board deck workflow (checklist): examples/board-deck-checklist.md
• Monthly review workflow (checklist): examples/monthly-review-checklist.md
• New model first-look prompts: examples/new-model-first-look.md

Source

This skill is derived from: https://claude.com/blog/how-anthropics-finance-team-uses-claude-to-shape-the-narrative-behind-the-numbers