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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

#491

Post by mnicky »

copirate wrote: post #376
chaboud wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But the author's workflow is actually very different from Boris'. #6 is about using plan mode whereas the author says "The built-in plan mode sucks". The author's post is much more than just "planning with clarity".

Since some time, Claude Codes's plan mode also writes file with a plan that you could probably edit etc. It's located in ~/.claude/plans/ for me. Actually, there's whole history of plans there.

I sometimes reference some of them to build context, e.g. after few unsuccessful tries to implement something, so that Claude doesn't try the same thing again.

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

#493

Post by locknitpicker »

copirate wrote: post #376
chaboud wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But the author's workflow is actually very different from Boris'. #6 is about using plan mode whereas the author says "The built-in plan mode sucks". The author's post is much more than just "planning with clarity".

> 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 discussing the best way to force a round peg through the square hole, but piling up expensive prompts to try to bridge the gap. Nowadays it's widely understood that it's far more effective and way cheaper to just refactor and rearchitect apps so that their structure is unsurprising and thus grounding issues are no longer a problem.

And planning mode. Each and every single LLM-assisted coding tool built their support for planning as the central flow and one that explicitly features iterations and manual updates of their planning step. What's novel about the blog post?

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

#494

Post by prescriptivist »

gabrieledarrigo wrote: post #482

Does 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 jo…

Honestly? Yeah.

I've been writing code for 25 years.

A year ago my org brought cursor in and I was skeptical for a specific reason: it was good at breaking CI in weird ways and I keep the CI system running for my org. Constants not mapping to file names, hallucinating function names/args, etc. It was categorically sloppy. And I was annoyed that engineers weren't catching this sloppy stuff. I thought this was going to increase velocity at the expense of quality. And it kind of did.

Fast forward a year and I haven't written code in a couple of weeks but I've shipped thousands LOC. I'm probably the pace setter on my team for constantly improving and experimenting with my AI flow. I speak to the computer probably half the time, maybe 75% on some days. I have multiple sessions going at all times. I review all the code Claude writes, but it's usually a one shot based on my extensive (dictated) prompts.

But to your identity crisis point, things are weird. I haven't actually produced this much code in a long time. And when I hit some milestone there are some differences between now and the before days: I don't have the sense of accomplishment that I used to get but also I don't have the mental exhaustion that I would get from really working through a solution. And so what I find is I just keep going and stacking commit after commit. It's not a bad thing, but it's fundamentally different than before and I am struggling a bit with what it means. Also to be fair I had lost my pure love of coding itself, so I am in a slightly weird spot with this, too.

What I do know is that throwing myself fully into it has secured my job for the foreseeable future because I'm faster than I've ever been and people look to me for guidance on how they can use these tool. I think with AI adoption the tallest trees will be cut last -- or at least I'm banking on it.

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

#495

Post by amelius »

copirate wrote: post #376
chaboud wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But the author's workflow is actually very different from Boris'. #6 is about using plan mode whereas the author says "The built-in plan mode sucks". The author's post is much more than just "planning with clarity".

The author __is__ Boris ...

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

#496

Post by mnicky »

solarkraft wrote: post #459
onion2k wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-soundi…

> 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.

I've experienced that too. Usually when I request correction, I add something like "Include only production level comments, (not changes)". Recently I also added special instruction for this to CLAUDE.md.

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

#497

Post by kaydub »

Frannky wrote: post #124

I tried Opus 4.6 recently and it’s really good. I had ditched Claude a long time ago for Grok + Gemini + OpenCode with Chinese models. I used Grok/Gemini for planning and core files, and OpenCode for setup, running, deploying, and editing. However, Opus made me rethink my entire workflow. Now, I do it like this: * PRD (Product Requirements Document) * main.py + requirements.txt + readme.md (I ask for minimal, functio…

Why would you use Grok at all? The one LLM that they're purposely trying to get specific output from (trying to make it "conservative"). I wouldn't want to use a project that I outright know is tainted by the owners trying to introduce bias.

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

#498

Post by le-mark »

0x696C6961 wrote: post #393
bonoboTP wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like retracing the history of software project management. The post is quite waterfall-like. Writing a lot of docs and specs upfront then implementing. Another approach is to just YOLO (on a new branch) make it write up the lessons afterwards, then start a new more informed try and throw away the first. Or any other combo. For me what works well is to ask it to write some code upfront to verify its assumptio…

This is exactly what I do. I assume most people avoid this approach due to cost.

Please explain what do you mean by “cost”?

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

#499

Post by bavell »

obiefernandez wrote: post #80
Betelbuddy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its very logical and pretty obvious when you do code generation. If you ask the same model, to generate code by starting with: - You are a Python Developer... or - You are a Professional Python Developer... or - You are one of the World most renowned Python Experts, with several books written on the subject, and 15 years of experience in creating highly reliable production quality code... You will notice a clear impr…

My colleague swears by his DHH claude skill https://danieltenner.com/dhh-is-immortal-and-costs-200-m/

Haha, this reminds me of all the stable diffusion "in the style of X artist" incantations.

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

#500

Post by derwiki »

pmg101 wrote: post #323
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.”

I don't judge content for being AI written, I judge it for the content itself (just like with code). However I do find the standard out-of-the-box style very grating. Call it faux-chummy linkedin corporate workslop style. Why don't people give the llm a steer on style? Either based on your personal style or at least on a writer whose style you admire. That should be easier.

My flow is to craft the content of the article in LLM speak, and then add to context a few of my human-written blog posts, and ask it to match my writing style. Made it to #1 on HN without a single callout for “LLM speak”!
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