The author discovered plan mode in cursor.
How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution
481–490 of 630 posts
Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution
#482Does anyone still write code?
I use agents to iterate on one task in parallel, with an approach similar to this one: https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-ai-adoption-journey#today
But I'm starting to have an identity crisis: am I doing it wrong, and should I use an agent to write any line of code of the product I'm working on?
Have I become a dinosaur in the blink of an eye?
Should I just let it go and accept that the job I was used to not only changed (which is fine), but now requires just driving the output of a machine, with no creative process at all?
Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t think it’s that big a red flag anymore. Most people use ai to rewrite or clean up content, so I’d think we should actually evaluate content for what it is rather than stop at “nah it’s ai written.”
>Most people use ai to rewrite or clean up content I think your sentence should have been "people who use ai do so to mostly rewrite or clean up content", but even then I'd question the statistical truth behind that claim. Personally, seeing something written by AI means that the person who wrote it did so just for looks and not for substance. Claiming to be a great author requires both penmanship and communication s…
People like to hide behind AI so they can claim credit for its ideas. It's the same thing in job interviews.
Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
That’s because it’s superstition. Unless someone can come up with some kind of rigorous statistics on what the effect of this kind of priming is it seems no better than claiming that sacrificing your first born will please the sun god into giving us a bountiful harvest next year. Sure, maybe this supposed deity really is this insecure and needs a jolly good pep talk every time he wakes up. or maybe you’re just suffer…
I actually have a prompt optimizer skill that does exactly this. https://github.com/solatis/claude-config It’s based entirely off academic research, and a LOT of research has been done in this area. One of the papers you may be interested in is “emotion prompting”, eg “it is super important for me that you do X” etc actually works. “Large Language Models Understand and Can be Enhanced by Emotional Stimuli” https://ar…
Thanks for sharing! I've been gravitating towards this sort of workflow already - just seems like the right approach for these tools.
Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution
#485My flow is pretty similar, except I also add in these steps at the end of planning:
* Review the plan for potential issues
* Add context to the plan that would be helpful for an implementing agent
Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution
#486The author seems to think they've hit upon something revolutionary... They've actually hit upon something that several of us have evolved to naturally. LLM's are like unreliable interns with boundless energy. They make silly mistakes, wander into annoying structural traps, and have to be unwound if left to their own devices. It's like the genie that almost pathologically misinterprets your wishes. So, how do you solv…
> The author seems to think they've hit upon something revolutionary...
> They've actually hit upon something that several of us have evolved to naturally.
I agree, it looks like the author is talking about spec-driven development with extra time-consuming steps.
Copilot's plan mode also supports iterations out of the box, and draft a plan only after manually reviewing and editing it. I don't know what the blogger was proposing that ventured outside of plan mode's happy path.
Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anthropic recommends doing magic invocations: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/19/claude-code-best-pract... It's easy to know why they work. The magic invocation increases test-time compute (easy to verify yourself - try!). And an increase in test-time compute is demonstrated to increase answer correctness (see any benchmark). It might surprise you to know that the only different between GPT 5.2-low and GPT 5.2-xhi…
I think this was more of a thing on older models. Since I started using Opus 4.5 I have not felt the need to do this.
Anthropic got rid of controlling the thinking budget by parsing your prompt - now it's a setting in /config.
Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution
#488Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
Revolutionary or not it was very nice of the author to make time and effort to share their workflow. For those starting out using Claude Code it gives a structured way to get things done bypassing the time/energy needed to “hit upon something that several of us have evolved to naturally”.
It's this line that I'm bristling at: "...the workflow I’ve settled into is radically different from what most people do with AI coding tools..." Anyone who spends some time with these tools (and doesn't black out from smashing their head against their desk) is going to find substantial benefit in planning with clarity. It was #6 in Boris's run-down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46470017 So, yes, I'm glad tha…
> Anyone who spends some time with these tools (and doesn't black out from smashing their head against their desk) is going to find substantial benefit in planning with clarity.
That's obvious by now, and the reason why all mainstream code assistants now offer planning mode as a central feature of their products.
It was baffling to read the blogger making claims about what "most people" do when anyone using code assistants already do it. I mean, the so called frontier models are very expensive and time-consuming to run. It's a very natural pressure to make each run count. Why on earth would anyone presume people don't put some thought into those runs?