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.
…did Opus 5 write this?
I’ve heard “earns its keep” in only two contexts in my life - the intro to the song “Regulate” and terrible Claude docs
Now if only the human would write its own comment.