- Enter plan mode for ANY non-trivial task (3+ steps or architectural decisions)
- If something goes sideways, STOP and re-plan immediately – don't keep pushing
- Use plan mode for verification steps, not just building
- Write detailed specs upfront to reduce ambiguity
- Use subagents liberally to keep main context window clean
- Offload research, exploration, and parallel analysis to subagents
- For complex problems, throw more compute at it via subagents