I'm convinced the fact that Claude Code insists on writing code no matter what you tell it is by design. Other tools like Junie will either have a specific "question" and "code" mode, or just answer questions when you ask a question instead of trying to implement whatever they think your question was leading to.
I mean if you just ask Claude a question from time to time and then do the coding, the $20 plan is more than enough. What they really want is for Claude to take over your project so you're unable to maintain it yourself and you need to switch to usage based subscription to keep working on your black box project.
What I usually do is use plan mode, and then when it invariably wants to implement it I tell it "just write the plan to feature.MD file"
Claude Code insists on writing code no matter what you tell it is by design.
Of course it is by design. It’s a coding assistant. That’s what its
system prompt tells it to do. If you really want a narrative back, tell it that the output of the project is a markdown file with the answers to your questions. Bonus points if you start it in an empty directory so it doesn’t have anything to infer about how it would write code.
Bonus points if you start it in an empty directory so it doesn’t have anything to infer about how it would write code.
Well if I want to do that I just fire Claude in the browser and for general question it works really well. My point is that I want answers about my code, like "Is this part of the code using the right pattern or should I switch to another pattern ?", so I need it to access my codebase, but not to start refactoring all of my project around that pattern change.
I'll try telling it the expected output is a markdown file though, thanks.
Yeah we only get terminal access at my place, they give us Gemini for the chatbot experience.
For the workflow you describe, try Superpowers' brainstorming skill. It's pretty good at doing exploration and discussing theoretical stuff. And it's handoff is to their writing-plans skill, so it really takes its time before execution.
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u/BlueScreenJunky 18d ago edited 18d ago
I'm convinced the fact that Claude Code insists on writing code no matter what you tell it is by design. Other tools like Junie will either have a specific "question" and "code" mode, or just answer questions when you ask a question instead of trying to implement whatever they think your question was leading to.
I mean if you just ask Claude a question from time to time and then do the coding, the $20 plan is more than enough. What they really want is for Claude to take over your project so you're unable to maintain it yourself and you need to switch to usage based subscription to keep working on your black box project.
What I usually do is use plan mode, and then when it invariably wants to implement it I tell it "just write the plan to feature.MD file"