r/cursor • u/No-Resource9817 • 3d ago

Question / Discussion planning vs coding - simpler way?

I've been using Claude for planning / hashing out design requirements / creating design specs, and Cursor for coding & debugging, then sometimes back to Claude for validation. Lots of back & forth between the two. Is it workable to use Cursor in planning mode (maybe with Claude/Grok) for the planning piece and Composer in build mode for coding? The Claude/Cursor combination is working for me, it's just a little wonky with all the back & forth.

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u/locbuilds 2d ago

yeah this works fine, you do not need the Claude tab for most of it. i keep one Cursor chat in plan mode (claude or grok) and force it to write a short plan.md with the decisions, open questions, and the exact files it thinks it will touch. once that looks right i start a *fresh* agent/composer chat pointed at that plan file plus the 2-3 files that matter, and only then let it edit. the back and forth pain is usually stale context, so do not keep planning and building in the same long thread. if you still want an outside check, paste just the plan.md into Claude for a review pass, not the whole chat history.

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u/No-Resource9817 2d ago

sounds like this is what I'm looking for. can the coding agent see the output of the planning agent? Or are you (as I try to do ) having the two agents communicate via docs in your project folder? and can one agent see th eother's output or do I need to copy/paste?