I had to stop reading about half way, it's written in that breathless linkedin/ai generated style.

I’ve been using Claude through opencode, and I figured this was just how it does it. I figured everyone else did it this way as well. I guess not!

Every "how I use Claude Code" post will get into the HN frontpage.

Which maybe has to do with people wanting to show how they use Claude Code in the comments!

Since the rise of AI systems I really wonder how people wrote code before. This is exactly how I planned out implementation and executed the plan. Might have been some paper notes, a ticket or a white board, buuuuut ... I don't know.

I tried Opus 4.6 recently and it’s really good. I had ditched Claude a long time ago for Grok + Gemini + OpenCode with Chinese models. I used Grok/Gemini for planning and core files, and OpenCode for setup, running, deploying, and editing.

However, Opus made me rethink my entire workflow. Now, I do it like this:

* PRD (Product Requirements Document)

* main.py + requirements.txt + readme.md (I ask for minimal, functional, modular code that fits the main.py)

* Ask for a step-by-step ordered plan

* Ask to focus on one step at a time

The super powerful thing is that I don’t get stuck on missing accounts, keys, etc. Everything is ordered and runs smoothly. I go rapidly from idea to working product, and it’s incredibly easy to iterate if I figure out new features are required while testing. I also have GLM via OpenCode, but I mainly use it for "dumb" tasks.

Interestingly, for reasoning capabilities regarding standard logic inside the code, I found Gemini 3 Flash to be very good and relatively cheap. I don't use Claude Code for the actual coding because forcing everything via chat into a main.py encourages minimal code that's easy to skim—it gives me a clearer representation of the feature space

this is exactly how I work with cursor

except that I put notes to plan document in a single message like:

   > plan quote
   my note
   > plan quote
   my note

otherwise, I'm not sure how to guarantee that ai won't confuse my notes with its own plan.

one new thing for me is to review the todo list, I was always relying on auto generated todo list

Cool, the idea of leaving comments directly in the plan never even occurred to me, even though it really is the obvious thing to do.

Do you markup and then save your comments in any way, and have you tried keeping them so you can review the rules and requirements later?

Interesting approach. The separation of planning and execution is crucial, but I think there's a missing layer most people overlook: permission boundaries between the two phases.

Right now when Claude Code (or any agent) executes a plan, it typically has the same broad permissions for every step. But ideally, each execution step should only have access to the specific tools and files it needs — least privilege, applied to AI workflows.

I've been experimenting with declarative permission manifests for agent tasks. Instead of giving the agent blanket access, you define upfront what each skill can read, write, and execute. Makes the planning phase more constrained but the execution phase much safer.

Anyone else thinking about this from a security-first angle?

I’m a big fan of having the model create a GitHub issue directly (using the GH CLI) with the exact plan it generates, instead of creating a markdown file that will eventually get deleted. It gives me a permanent record and makes it easy to reference and close the issue once the PR is ready.