Developers report workarounds replacing plan mode with custom tools
3Sep 25 9:00 PM · 1d ago · 4 comments · 1 source · development 3 of 6
Multiple developers in the discussion described building their own systems to replace plan mode. Some created MCP servers with micro-skills, others adopted spec-driven documentation workflows, and several now use custom prompting approaches—suggesting the dev community is moving beyond built-in plan mode toward bespoke solutions.
“I ended up building out tool an MCP server that I use as a bit of a psuedo harness for Claude…to get Claude to think in a repeatable and reliable manner.”
Plan mode was great, but I realized I progressed well beyond it. I found that I was getting these categories repeated errors and oversights from Claude (and frankly it hasn't gotten much better about this). Skills were too generic and got lost to context.I ended up building out tool an MCP server that I use as a bit of a psuedo harness for Claude…
I'm probably just behind the curve, but I still use plan mode quite a bit in Claude Code. I iterate on the plan repeatedly until it largely agrees with what I want. Once it seems good I ask it to build the plan and open a PR when done.My only critic of the plan mode is I wish it was easier to see the updates and changes easily in Claude Code as we…
Using an LLM for any large project shows how useful it is to have data and functions that aren't siloed. That's why CLI apps have had a resurgence: because the LLM can interface with them. Yet the reaction from so many who are deep into LLM development is to build their own little silo: an app.We really need a better model. One alternative is to…
Early versions of plan mode would erase the chat history and present the plan as the start of a new session when you approved it.I miss that. It worked really well, and it kept the context clean.