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How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

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Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#541

Post by signatoremo »

dabedee wrote: post #504

I appreciate the author taking the time to share his workflow even though I really dislike the way this article is written. My dislike stems from sentences like this one: "I’ve been using Claude Code as my primary development tool for approx 9 months, and the workflow I’ve settled into is radically different from what most people do with AI coding tools." There is nothing radically different in the way he's using it…

> the obvious use of AI to write or edit the article makes it further indigestible: "That’s it. No magic prompts, no elaborate system instructions, no clever hacks. Just a disciplined pipeline that separates thinking from typing."

Any comment complaining about using AI deserves a downvote. First of all it reads like witch hunt, accusation without evidence that’s only based on some common perceptions. Secondly, whether it’s written with AI’s help or not, that particular sentence is clear, concise, and communicative. It’s much better than a lot of human written mumblings prevalent here on HN.

Anyone wants to guess if I’m using AI to help with this comment of mine?

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#543

Post by locknitpicker »

copirate wrote: post #513
locknitpicker wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author's post is much more than just "planning with clarity". Not much more, though. It introduces "research", which is the central topic of LLMs since they first arrived. I mean, LLMs coined the term "hallucination", and turned grounding into a key concept. In the past, building up context was thought to be the right way to approach LLM-assisted coding, but that concept is dead and proven to be a mistake, like…

A detailed workflow that's quite different from the other posts I've seen.

> A detailed workflow that's quite different from the other posts I've seen.

Seriously? Provide context with a prompt file, prepare a plan in plan mode, and then execute the plan? You get more detailed descriptions of this if you read the introductory how-to guides of tools such as Copilot.

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#545

Post by mattmanser »

abustamam wrote: post #390
mattmanser wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers should work by wasting lots of time making the wrong thing? I bet if they did a work and motion study on this approach they'd find the classic: "Thinks they're more productive, AI has actually made them less productive" But lots of lovely dopamine from this false progress that gets thrown away!

> Developers should work by wasting lots of time making the wrong thing? Yes? I can't even count how many times I worked on something my company deemed was valuable only for it to be deprecated or thrown away soon after. Or, how many times I solved a problem but apparently misunderstood the specs slightly and had to redo it. Or how many times we've had to refactor our code because scope increased. In fact, the very e…

That's not the same thing at all, is it, and not what's being discussed.

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#546

Post by Centigonal »

The idea of having the model create a plan/spec, which you then mark up with comments before execution, is a cornerstone of how the new generation of AI IDEs like Google Antigravity operate.

Claude Code also has "Planning Mode" which will do this, but in my experience its "plan" sometimes includes the full source code of several files, which kind of defeats the purpose.

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#547

Post by mattmanser »

onion2k wrote: post #386
mattmanser wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers should work by wasting lots of time making the wrong thing? I bet if they did a work and motion study on this approach they'd find the classic: "Thinks they're more productive, AI has actually made them less productive" But lots of lovely dopamine from this false progress that gets thrown away!

Developers should work by wasting lots of time making the wrong thing? Yes. In fact, that's not emphatic enough: HELL YES! More specifically, developers should experiment. They should test their hypothesis. They should try out ideas by designing a solution and creating a proof of concept, then throw that away and build a proper version based on what they learned. If your approach to building something is to implement…

I've been doing this a long times and I've never had to do that and have delivered multiple successful products used by millions of users. Some of which were used for years after we stopped doing any sort of even maintaining with no bugs, problems or crashes.

There are only a few software architecture patterns because there's only a few ways to solve code architecture problems.

If you're getting your initial design so wrong that you have to start again from scratch midway through, that shows a lack of experience, not insight.

You wouldn't know this, but I'm also a bit of an expert at refactoring, having saved several projects which had built up so much technical debt the original contractors ran away. I've regularly rewritten 1,000s if not 10,000s of line into 100s of lines of code.

So it's especially galling to be told not only that somehow all code problems are unique (they almost never are), but my code is building technical debt (it's not, I solve that stuff).

Most problems are solved, and you should be using other people's solutions to solve the problems you face.

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#548

Post by chaboud »

dawnerd wrote: post #461
ratsimihah wrote: post #295

Earlier 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.”

Very high chance someone that’s using Claude to write code is also using Claude to write a post from some notes. That goes beyond rewriting and cleaning up.

I use Claude Code quite a bit (one of my former interns noted that I crossed 1.8 Million lines of code submitted last year, which is... um... concerning), but I still steadfastly refuse to use AI to generate written content. There are multiple purposes for writing documents, but the most critical is the forming of coherent, comprehensible thinking. The act of putting it on paper is what crystallizes the thinking.

However, I use Claude for a few things:

1. Research buddy, having conversations about technical approaches, surveying the research landscape.

2. Document clarity and consistency evaluator. I don't take edits, but I do take notes.

3. Spelling/grammar checker. It's better at this than regular spellcheck, due to its handling of words introduced in a document (e.g., proper names) and its understanding of various writing styles (e.g., comma inside or outside of quotes, one space or two after a period?)

Every time I get into a one hour meeting to see a messy, unclear, almost certainly heavily AI generated document being presented to 12 people, I spend at least thirty seconds reminding the team that 2-3 hours saved using AI to write has cost 11+ person-hours of time having others read and discuss unclear thoughts.

I will note that some folks actually put in the time to guide AI sufficiently to write meaningfully instructive documents. The part that people miss is that the clarity of thinking, not the word count, is what is required.

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#549

Post by antonvs »

remify wrote: post #442
sparin9 wrote: post #418

I think the real value here isn’t “planning vs not planning,” it’s forcing the model to surface its assumptions before they harden into code. LLMs don’t usually fail at syntax. They fail at invisible assumptions about architecture, constraints, invariants, etc. A written plan becomes a debugging surface for those assumptions.

Sub agent also helps a lot in that regard. Have an agent do the planning, have an implementation agent do the code and have another one do the review. Clear responsabilities helps a lot. There also blue team / red team that works. The idea is always the same: help LLM to reason properly with less and more clear instructions.

Since the phases are sequential, what’s the benefit of a sub agent vs just sequential prompts to the same agent? Just orchestration?

Re: How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution

#550

Post by xnx »

chaboud wrote: post #241

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. 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…

> LLM's are like unreliable interns with boundless energy.

This was a popular analogy years ago, but is out of date in 2026.

Specs and a plan are still good basis, they are of equal or more importance than the ephemeral code implementation.

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