alt Hacker News[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.
Replies
I think over time more and more will be peeled back to just the model and markdown. I have a beautiful factory running with key personas all it is is a few markdown files it is building a mac app fantastically well.
https://innerloop.test/breadcrumb (for reference)
So planning mode is dead, long live planning?
Hi, thanks for Claude Code. I use it, and it works well. Have you considered changing it so the text comes down from the top of the screen, in green, like The Matrix?
> so I can better understand the change and alternatives considered. I don’t do this very often,
# YOLO mode
It’s been like that with me in Grok 4.6 for the last couple of months as well.
I just start my day writing about 20 queues /goal prompts and then check the work at the end of the day. It’s almost always right!
Btw random question about Claude Code. Is it just me, or has it become a lot slower in the last 2-3 months? I am on Fable but also latest Opus.
For me its like a dry-run.
I use plan mode, because my current project benefits from "pair programming."
I have one session define a task, and provide a formal specification plus context in a "cover letter."
The session B, in plan mode, produces the plan back.
Session one reviews the plan and clears it, ratifying portions and often specifying specific changes.
Session one then executes.
What has been striking to me in this approach is that even with two instances of the same model (currently Opus 5.5), there are regularly corrections made. I use "project chat" for session A and Code for session B atm; it is very typical that Code finds and corrects details or oversights in the task spec; it is also typical (though less so with 5.5) that session A (chat) pushes back or clarifies things Code doesn't have the context for.
I have been afraid to open up the potential of negotiation beyond what this is costing as it is. But I am also afraid to simply skip the formalisms, because of the consistent correction that occurs in this back-and-forth.
Each component of the pattern is schematized, generated from a template, and validated, to keep things tight.
Lots of tokens! But I trust this process far more than "just typing" :)
As a long time user of Claude Code, I've just naturally stopped using it because the model figures it out, and i prompt it accordingly like 'come up with a plan'. Glad to see your experience matches
I ask Codex (I am not using Anthropic anymore) to always generate a plan file first, unless explicitly told otherwise.
I also tell it to write deviations and rename plans accordingly once done.
That way I keep the codebases I have to or enjoy to work on in my head and don't become too dependant on any provider or on stochastic parrots in general.
Plan mode still earns its keep when the blast radius is high.
For a one-file change I don’t bother. For anything that touches auth, payments, or a shared schema I still want the plan written down first — not because the model can’t figure it out, but because I need a moment where I can still say “no” before it starts editing.
The mode was never really about making the model smarter. It was about making the human stop and look.
> I work on Claude Code
So basically you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Not everyone is employed to burn money.
except the fact that claude code in plan mode does destructive operations, requiring a hook to tell it not to do stupid things, so its not really a "read only" or "dont code yet" tool, imho.