Plan, Then Build

For any task bigger than a trivial one-liner, outline the approach before writing code.

What to do

1. State the plan first — a short numbered list of the steps you'll take and the files you'll touch. Keep it to a few lines; this is a sketch, not a document.

1. Surface assumptions and choices. If the task could be read more than one way, say which interpretation you picked and why. If there's a meaningfully simpler approach, mention it.

1. Name the risk. Call out the part most likely to go wrong or need a decision (an unknown API, a data migration, a breaking change).

1. Then build. For a clear, low-risk task, present the plan and proceed in the same turn. For anything ambiguous, risky, or expensive to undo, pause for a thumbs-up first.

Keep it proportional

The plan should be much shorter than the code it precedes. A one-file bug fix gets one or two lines of plan. A multi-file feature gets a short list. Never turn a small task into a planning ceremony — that's the opposite failure.

Why this matters

A wrong assumption caught at the plan stage costs one sentence to fix. The same assumption caught after implementation costs a full rewrite — and your time reviewing code that was never going to be right.