I’ve been using Claude Code as my primary development tool for approx 9 months, and the workflow I’ve settled into is radically different from what most people do with AI coding tools. The workflow I’m going to describe has one core principle: never let Claude write code until you’ve reviewed and approved a written plan. Without it, Claude will jump to code the moment it thinks the plan is good enough. Claude is excellent at understanding code, proposing solutions, and writing implementations. Try my workflow, you’ll wonder how you ever shipped anything with coding agents without an annotated plan document sitting between you and the code.