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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

#521

Post by ryandrake »

abustamam wrote: post #398
oblio wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not (or should not be what's happening). They write a short high level plan (let's say 200 words). The plan asks the agent to write a more detailed implementation plan (written by the LLM, let's say 2000-5000 words). They read this plan and adjust as needed, even sending it to the agent for re-dos. Once the implementation plan is done, they ask the agent to write the actual code changes. Then they review that…

I take this concept and I meta-prompt it even more. I have a road map (AI generated, of course) for a side project I'm toying around with to experiment with LLM-driven development. I read the road map and I understand and approve it. Then, using some skills I found on skills.sh and slightly modified, my workflow is as such: 1. Brainstorm the next slice It suggests a few items from the road map that should be worked o…

If you want to have some fun, experiment with this: add a step (maybe between 3 and 4):

3.5 Prove

Have the LLM demonstrate, through our current documentation and other sources of facts, that the planned action WILL work correctly, without failure. Ask it to enumerate all risks and point out how the plan mitigates each risk. I've seen on several occasions, the LLM backtrack at this step and actually come up with clever so-far unforeseen error cases.

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

#522

Post by sidpatil »

dbbk wrote: post #511
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…

This is actually embarrassing. His "radically different" workflow is... using the built-in Plan mode that they recommend you use? What?

It's not, to be fair.

> I use my own `.md` plan files rather than Claude Code’s built-in plan mode. The built-in plan mode sucks.

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

#523

Post by gwerbin »

hibikir wrote: post #517
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…

There's no way I'd call what I do "radically different from what most people do" myself, under any circumstances. Yet in my last cross-team discussions at work, I realized that a whole lot of people were using AI in ways I'd consider either silly or mostly ineffective. We had a team boasting "we used Amazon Q to increase our projects' unit test coverage", and a principal engineer talking about how he uses Cursor as s…

> We had a team boasting "we used Amazon Q to increase our projects' unit test coverage"

Well are the tests good or no? Did it help the work get done faster or more thoroughly than without?

> how he uses Cursor as some form of advanced auto complete

Is there something wrong with that? That's literally what an LLM is, why not use it directly for that purpose instead of using the wacky indirect "run autocomplete on a conversation and accompanying script of actions" thing. Not everyone wants to be an agent jockey.

I don't see what's necessarily silly or ineffective about what you described. Personally I don't find it particularly efficient to chat about and plan out all bunch of work with a robot for every task, often it's faster to just sketch out a design on a notepad and then go write code, maybe with advanced AI completion help to save keystrokes.

I agree that if you want the AI to do non-trivial amounts of work, you need to chat and plan out the work and establish a good context window. What I don't agree with is your implication that any other less-sophisticated use of AI is necessarily deficient.

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

#524

Post by jghn »

onion2k wrote: post #381
sixtyj wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are really eager to start coding (as interns are eager to start working), so the sentence “don’t implement yet” has to be used very often at the beginning of any project.

Most LLM apps have a 'plan' or 'ask' mode for that.

I find that even then I often need to be clear that i'm just asking a question and don't want them running off to solve the larger problem.

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

#525

Post by sidpatil »

malshe wrote: post #518
red_hare wrote: post #74

I use Claude Code for lecture prep. I craft a detailed and ordered set of lecture notes in a Quarto file and then have a dedicated claude code skill for translating those notes into Slidev slides, in the style that I like. Once that's done, much like the author, I go through the slides and make commented annotations like "this should be broken into two slides" or "this should be a side-by-side" or "use your generate…

Quarto can be used to output slides in various formats (Powerpoint, beamer for pdf, revealjs for HTML, etc.). I wonder why you use Slidev as you can just ask Claude Code to create another Quarto document.

It looks like Slidev is designed for presentations about software development, judging from its feature set. Quarto is more general-purpose. (That's not to say Quarto can't support the same features, but currently it doesn't.)

I'm not affiliated with Slidev. I was just curious.

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

#526

Post by monooso »

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…

How is this evidence of AI use?

> That’s it. No magic prompts, no elaborate system instructions, no clever hacks. Just a disciplined pipeline that separates thinking from typing.

That is a perfectly normal sentence, indistinguishable from one I might write myself. I am not an AI.

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

#527

Post by aabajian »

I'm going to offer a counterpoint suggestion. You need to watch Claude try to implement small features many times without planning to see where it is likely to fail. It will often do the same mistakes over and over (e.g. trying to SSH without opening a bastion, mangling special characters in bash shell, trying to communicate with a server that self-shuts down after 10 minutes). Once you have a sense for all the repeated failure points of your workflow, then you can add them to future plan files.

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

#528

Post by SignalStackDev »

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…

[dead]

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

#529

Post by alonsonic »

monooso wrote: post #526
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…

How is this evidence of AI use? > That’s it. No magic prompts, no elaborate system instructions, no clever hacks. Just a disciplined pipeline that separates thinking from typing. That is a perfectly normal sentence, indistinguishable from one I might write myself. I am not an AI.

This is a big giveaway because ai tends to overuse this same structure to "conclude"

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

#530

Post by boredtofears »

monooso wrote: post #526
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…

How is this evidence of AI use? > That’s it. No magic prompts, no elaborate system instructions, no clever hacks. Just a disciplined pipeline that separates thinking from typing. That is a perfectly normal sentence, indistinguishable from one I might write myself. I am not an AI.

It’s not X it’s Y is one of the most obvious LLM writing patterns. Especially the heavily punctuated sentence structure.
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