Context
Here's some tips I've picked up over time on context management: "spawn a subagent to do deep research on this topic" Spawn subagents for parallel work. They do not pollute the main agent's context. They can individually do work and add just the valuable context from their work to the main agent's context. /compact - Others are iffy about compacting, but often the tradeoff to stay in the same chat and eat the compacting is worth it. Their system for compacting is smart. /transfer-context That said, after compacting enough times or doing any task not directly related, quality will degrade. Don't be afraid to create new chats. If you need to transfer context, just tell the model to give you a prompt to put into another model with the related context for the task with the files (for anything advanced create md files, although I find managing these md files to be annoying). Here's a gist of my /transfer-context command. /context Shows you how much context you have left. You'll get a report like this: Claude will also tell you when you're running low on context. This is in the bottom right of the terminal. Make the decision to compact or to switch chats at this point. Don't wait until it hits 0% as it will degrade your outputs, and if it compacts in the middle of a task it will forget potentially relevant context that you've given it even in the last chat. Maintain focus: one chat = roughly one task. If a chat is focused on a single task it will have more relevant context. The definition of a 'task' is miles broader than what it used to be. Test the limits and see what works for you. Generating things in a chat that already has context will always perform best, whether it's docs, tests, or related code. Sometimes for one off changes (like a bug fix), I'll do them within the chat context, commit changes, and then rewind the conversation back to save context. Use /resume to continue from a previous chat. Note on context limits: Claude Code has a 200k context limit. You hit the wall faster than alternatives like Codex (400k) or Gemini (1M).
Planning
Your time spent planning is directly proportional to agent output. Rule of thumb: a good prompt will save you 3 minutes of time on follow up prompts and debugging for every 1 minute you spend planning. Shift+Tab twice: Enter plan mode. I use it, but only for larger tasks or when the exact shape of what I want it to be is unclear. Note: plan mode saves to a .md in the global ~/.claude folder, which isn't accessible within your repo. I'll either ask Claude to create a plan.md in the repo after plan mode, or skip plan mode entirely and plan in-chat.
Three Approaches
Plan mode dialogue: Start a conversation, ask questions, let it explore code, create a plan together. When you're happy, say "write plan to docs/*.md and start coding." or if in plan mode, "yes, and bypass permissions." Sprint-style todo list: For larger projects, set up a progress.txt and structured task list (prd.json). More on this in the Advanced section. Generate revert plan: Run your prompt, see what it generates, then revert and keep planning for the final plan.
After creating your plan, use our /interview-me-planmd command which interviews you in depth about your plan before building. (See this X post, I've also tried it myself and found it genuinely effective.) Read @plan.md and interview me in detail using the AskUserQuestionTool about literally anything: technical implementation, UI & UX, concerns, tradeoffs, etc. Make sure the questions are not obvious. Be very in-depth and continue interviewing me continually until it's complete, then write the plan to the file. Opus 4.5 is amazing at explaining things and makes stellar ASCII diagrams. My exploration involves asking lots of questions, clarifying requirements, understanding where/how/why to make changes. Backwards compatibility: Models are currently, RLHF'd so far into oblivion that you need to explicitly ask it to not maintain backwards compatibility. Watch out for overengineering: Claude models love to do too much. Extra files, flexibility you didn't ask for, unnecessary abstractions. Be as explicit with what NOT to do as possible. Pete puts it well: "We want the simplest change possible. We don't care about migration. Code readability matters most, and we're happy to make bigger changes to achieve it." Keep in mind: Coding agents are better at creating new files than editing existing ones. It can often be valuable to tweak the seed prompt and reset all the code from scratch.
Closing the loop
There's a classic XKCD about programmers spending a week automating a task that takes 5 minutes.
With agentic coding, this equation has flipped. Closing the loop is now almost always worth it. The cost of automation has collapsed. What used to take a week now takes a conversation. If you find yourself doing something more than once, close the loop. If you spend a lot of time doing x thing, close the loop. Make commands for repeated prompts
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