The post examines what Claude Code’s plan mode actually does, from the perspective of a user who mostly avoids it. The author finds that plan mode is essentially a hidden markdown file plus a short prompt that tells the model to behave read-only and follow a phased planning structure. The tooling is not truly read-only; it’s prompt-based reinforcement with a small state machine and UX flow around entering and exiting plan mode. He argues that much of the behavior could be replicated by manual prompting, but you would lose the UI affordances like the approval screen. The conclusion is that plan mode is largely a structured prompt and a bit of UI, which feels less natural to him than direct collaboration with the model and editable files.
Dec 17, 2025 Software EngineeringDeveloper Tools