[I work on Claude Code] I broadly agree with the author’s point: plan mode was useful, and is no longer useful.
In Claude Code, all plan mode does is add a little reminder to every user message along the lines of “you’re in plan mode, please don’t code yet”. It’s something I came up with late on a Sunday night many months ago, when I got tired of asking Claude to plan with me first before coding in each new session. Something people might not realize is plan mode has always been a prompt — it has never changed the toolset because doing so would break the prompt cache, and so would be expensive for users.
This worked well for a while, until a few months ago, using early versions of Fable, I realized that I wasn’t using plan mode anymore because the model just got it, and because for the increasingly complex work I asked the model to do, planning had become interactive and iterative. With Opus 5.5, I feel Opus has gotten to that point too.
For codebase understanding, I sometimes ask Claude to generate an artifact that explains some aspect of its changes. For complex diffs to core parts of the system, I will often ask it to make diagrams or even interactive demos so I can better understand the change and alternatives considered. I don’t do this very often, but it’s a useful way to explain code when you need it. I ask Claude to attach these artifacts to its PRs also, so others can understand and future Claudes have the context.
> This worked well for a while, until a few months ago, using early versions of Fable, I realized that I wasn’t using plan mode anymore because the model just got it, and because for the increasingly complex work I asked the model to do, planning had become interactive and iterative. With Opus 5.5, I feel Opus has gotten to that point too.
For me it’s actually the opposite, and Claude Code’s plan mode isn’t nearly sufficient. Personally I ask Claude to write down a markdown file with its plan, then review the plan using plannotator, and then go back and forth (most of the time it’s actually the comments that are the problem, not the code).
Then start a fresh session, seed it with the plan, tell Claude to find ambiguities / friction points / oversights, resolve those, and then implement it.
Review once again with plannotator, go back and forth, and then send PR.
Maybe not the “vibe coding” that was once imagined, but this does ensure I am fully aware of the code and architecture, the quality, and this also prevents long term degradation.
There is a popular skill for this kind of workflows: <a href="https://github.com/obra/superpowers" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/obra/superpowers
Going through the superpowers spec-plan-implement-review cycle took one of my test runs (local AI) from 40 minutes to 8 hours, and produced a lower-quality result. I want to use something like that skill, but I'm doubting the efficacy of this one.
bcherny · · focus · HN ↗
In Claude Code, all plan mode does is add a little reminder to every user message along the lines of “you’re in plan mode, please don’t code yet”. It’s something I came up with late on a Sunday night many months ago, when I got tired of asking Claude to plan with me first before coding in each new session. Something people might not realize is plan mode has always been a prompt — it has never changed the toolset because doing so would break the prompt cache, and so would be expensive for users.
This worked well for a while, until a few months ago, using early versions of Fable, I realized that I wasn’t using plan mode anymore because the model just got it, and because for the increasingly complex work I asked the model to do, planning had become interactive and iterative. With Opus 5.5, I feel Opus has gotten to that point too.
For codebase understanding, I sometimes ask Claude to generate an artifact that explains some aspect of its changes. For complex diffs to core parts of the system, I will often ask it to make diagrams or even interactive demos so I can better understand the change and alternatives considered. I don’t do this very often, but it’s a useful way to explain code when you need it. I ask Claude to attach these artifacts to its PRs also, so others can understand and future Claudes have the context.
stingraycharles · · focus · HN ↗
For me it’s actually the opposite, and Claude Code’s plan mode isn’t nearly sufficient. Personally I ask Claude to write down a markdown file with its plan, then review the plan using plannotator, and then go back and forth (most of the time it’s actually the comments that are the problem, not the code).
Then start a fresh session, seed it with the plan, tell Claude to find ambiguities / friction points / oversights, resolve those, and then implement it.
Review once again with plannotator, go back and forth, and then send PR.
Maybe not the “vibe coding” that was once imagined, but this does ensure I am fully aware of the code and architecture, the quality, and this also prevents long term degradation.
nerdyadventurer · · focus · HN ↗
vdqtp3 · · focus · HN ↗