February 21, 2026
Plan it like it’s hot
How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution
Fans cheer ‘plan first’ as others say it’s just a hack to tame the bot
TLDR: A developer swears by “plan first, then code,” making the AI draft research and a plan you approve before anything ships. Commenters shared ticket and note tricks, skeptics called it a workaround for AI memory limits, and one user shut down “this looks AI‑written” claims.
The post throws down one rule: never let the bot write code until you’ve approved a written plan. The author swears this research→plan→todo routine beats “just prompt and pray,” even calling built‑in plan mode weak. The comments? Surprisingly loud.
Fans piled in. zitrusfrucht said the “workflow is controlled by me, not by the tool,” swapping plan.md for ticket files so every change has a paper trail. srid shared a twist: a /plan command with a bold ME: prefix for inline notes, with receipts. Others argued it’s not philosophy, it’s pragmatism: renewiltord called plans and todos “an artifact of context size limits,” because you can hit /reset and pick up where you left off.
Cue drama: a drive-by claimed the post looked AI‑written; crazygringo slapped that down with “nothing about this looks LLM‑generated.” Meanwhile ihsw said this mirrors Kiro’s spec-based flow: approve requirements, then design, then implementation — rinse, repeat.
Humor popped too: people joked their ticket filenames felt like office bureaucracy, ME: notes are “sticky notes for the robot,” and /reset is the Nintendo‑cartridge blow of coding. The vibe: keep humans in charge and stop letting AI freestyle your codebase.
Key Points
- •The author’s core principle is to prevent Claude from writing code until a written plan is reviewed and approved.
- •The workflow follows Research → Plan → Annotate (repeat) → Todo List → Implement → Feedback & Iterate.
- •In the Research phase, Claude deeply analyzes relevant codebase sections and produces a detailed research.md document.
- •The Plan phase creates a plan.md with approach, code snippets, file paths, and trade-offs based on the actual codebase.
- •The author prefers markdown files over Claude Code’s built-in plan mode to maintain control and reduce integration errors.