Ask for the plan first, edit never

I used to open Claude Code or Cursor and start typing implementation details immediately. I would write a function signature, change my mind halfway through, delete three files worth of context, and end up in a state where I could not explain what I was trying to build anymore. The session became a series of local corrections that never addressed the original problem.

Now I stop before the first keystroke. I write a five line plan in plain text: what files I will touch, what the data flow looks like, where the types will go, and what I expect to break. I paste this into the chat and wait for feedback. This takes maybe ninety seconds to write and thirty seconds for Claude to read. No editing allowed on this turn.

The concrete practice is I set a rule: if a message I send contains code, it also contains a plan written first. I use a simple format with one line per concern: purpose, input shape, output shape, where it integrates, known risk. I have caught wrong module boundaries, missing error cases, and approaches that would have required refactoring the type signatures before I changed a single line of actual code.

The caveat is that this approach breaks down when you are truly exploring unknown territory. If you do not know what the problem is yet, a written plan is premature. In those cases I still start with the plan, but I make it a hypothesis instead and mark it as provisional. The discipline of writing it down helps anyway, even if everything changes.