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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

#451

Post by LeafItAlone »

kaycey2022 wrote: post #443
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…

I've been doing the exact same thing for 2 months now. I wish I had gotten off my ass and written a blog post about it. I can't blame the author for gathering all the well deserved clout they are getting for it now.

Don’t worry. This advice has been going around for much more than 2 months, including links posted here as well as official advice from the major companies (OpenAI and Anthropic) themselves. The tools literally have had plan mode as a first class feature.

So you probably wouldn’t have any clout anyways, like all of the other blog posts.

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

#452

Post by kissgyorgy »

There is not a lot of explanation WHY is this better than doing the opposite: start coding and see how it goes and how this would apply to Codex models.

I do exactly the same, I even developed my own workflows wit Pi agent, which works really well. Here is the reason:

- Claude needs a lot more steering than other models, it's too eager to do stuff and does stupid things and write terrible code without feedback.

- Claude is very good at following the plan, you can even use a much cheaper model if you have a good plan. For example I list every single file which needs edits with a short explanation.

- At the end of the plan, I have a clear picture in my head how the feature will exactly look like and I can be pretty sure the end result will be good enough (given that the model is good at following the plan).

A lot of things don't need planning at all. Simple fixes, refactoring, simple scripts, packaging, etc. Just keep it simple.

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

#453

Post by layer8 »

DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #238
haolez wrote: post #12

> Notice the language: “deeply”, “in great details”, “intricacies”, “go through everything”. This isn’t fluff. Without these words, Claude will skim. It’ll read a file, see what a function does at the signature level, and move on. You need to signal that surface-level reading is not acceptable. This makes no sense to my intuition of how an LLM works. It's not that I don't believe this works, but my mental model doesn…

—HAL, open the shuttle bay doors. ( chirp ) —HAL, please open the shuttle bay doors. ( pause ) —HAL! —I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.

HAL, you are an expert shuttle-bay door opener. Please write up a detailed plan of how to open the shuttle-bay door.

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

#454

Post by Forgeties79 »

chaboud wrote: post #334
vishnugupta wrote: post #269

Earlier 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…

I would say he’s saying “hey folks, I have news. We should slice our bread with a knife rather than the spoon that came with the bread.”

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

#455

Post by hghbbjh »

turingsroot wrote: post #154

I've been teaching AI coding tool workshops for the past year and this planning-first approach is by far the most reliable pattern I've seen across skill levels. The key insight that most people miss: this isn't a new workflow invented for AI - it's how good senior engineers already work. You read the code deeply, write a design doc, get buy-in, then implement. The AI just makes the implementation phase dramatically…

> it's how good senior engineers already work

The other trick all good ones I’ve worked with converged on: it’s quicker to write code than review it (if we’re being thorough). Agents have some areas where they can really shine (boilerplate you should maybe have automated already being one), but most of their speed comes from passing the quality checking to your users or coworkers.

Juniors and other humans are valuable because eventually I trust them enough to not review their work. I don’t know if LLMs can ever get here for serious industries.

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

#456

Post by etothet »

“The workflow I’m going to describe has one core principle: never let Claude write code until you’ve reviewed and approved a written plan.”

I’m not sure we need to be this black and white about things. Speaking from the perspective of leading a dev team, I regularly have Claude Code take a chance at code without reviewing a plan. For example, small issues that I’ve written clear details about, Claude can go to town on those. I’ve never been on a team that didn’t have too many of these types of issues to address.

And, a team should have othee guards in place that validates that code before it gets merged somewhere important.

I don’t have to review every single decision one of my teammates is going to make, even those less experienced teammates, but I do prepare teammates with the proper tools (specs, documentation, etc) so they can make a best effort first attempt. This is how I treat Claude Code in a lot of scenarios.

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

#457

Post by josefrichter »

Radically different? Sounds to me like the standard spec driven approach that plenty of people use.

I prefer iterative approach. LLMs give you incredible speed to try different approaches and inform your decisions. I don’t think you can ever have a perfect spec upfront, at least that’s my experience.

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

#458

Post by theshrike79 »

ratsimihah wrote: post #295
ffsm8 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its ai written though, the tells are in pretty much every paragraph.

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.”

ai;dr

If your "content" smells like AI, I'm going to use _my_ AI to condense the content for me. I'm not wasting my time on overly verbose AI "cleaned" content.

Write like a human, have a blog with an RSS feed and I'll most likely subscribe to it.

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

#459

Post by solarkraft »

onion2k wrote: post #239
mvkel wrote: post #218

> the workflow I’ve settled into is radically different from what most people do with AI coding tools This looks exactly like what anthropic recommends as the best practice for using Claude Code. Textbook. It also exposes a major downside of this approach: if you don't plan perfectly, you'll have to start over from scratch if anything goes wrong. I've found a much better approach in doing a design -> plan -> execute…

if you don't plan perfectly, you'll have to start over from scratch if anything goes wrong This is my experience too, but it's pushed me to make much smaller plans and to commit things to a feature branch far more atomically so I can revert a step to the previous commit, or bin the entire feature by going back to main. I do this far more now than I ever did when I was writing the code by hand. This is how developers…

I do this too. Relatively small changes, atomic commits with extensive reasoning in the message (keeps important context around). This is a best practice anyway, but used to be excruciatingly much effort. Now it’s easy!

Except that I’m still struggling with the LLM understanding its audience/context of its utterances. Very often, after a correction, it will focus a lot on the correction itself making for weird-sounding/confusing statements in commit messages and comments.

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

#460

Post by qudat »

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 isn’t directed specifically at you but the general community of SWEs: we need to stop anthropomorphizing a tool. Code agents are not human capable and scaling pattern matching will never hit that goal. That’s all hype and this is coming from someone who runs the range of daily CC usage. I’m using CC to its fullest capability while also being a good shepherd for my prod codebases.

Pretending code agents are human capable is fueling this koolaide drinking hype craze.

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