I did a sort of bell curve with this type of workflow over summer.

- Base Claude Code (released)

- Extensive, self-orchestrated, local specs & documentation; ie waterfall for many features/longer term project goals (summer)

- Base Claude Code (today)

Claude Code is getting better at orchestrating it's own subagents for divide/conquer type work.

My problem with these extensive self-orchestrated multi-agent / spec modes is the type of drift and rot of all the changes and then integrated parts of an application that a lot of the time end up in merge conflicts. Aside from my own decision cognitive space, it's also a lot to just generally orchestrate and review. I spent a ton of type enforcing Claude to use the system I put in place including documentation updates and continuous logging of work.

I feel extremely productive with a single Claude Code for a project. Maybe for minor features, I'll launch Claude Code in the web so that it can operate in an isolated space to knock them out and create a PR.

I will plan and annotate extensively for large features, but not many features or broad project specs all at the same time. Annotation and better planning UX, I think, are going to be increasingly important for now. The only augment of Claude Code I have is a hook for plan mode review: https://github.com/backnotprop/plannotator