Claude Code: Coding Plan

Last updated: 2026-08-31

Coding Plan makes Claude Code go from "doing whatever comes to mind" to "thinking clearly first" — output a plan before executing complex tasks, confirm then proceed.

💡 Tip: Coding Plan essentially makes Claude Code output a plan before acting, including steps, impact scope, and risk assessment. You confirm before execution, avoiding "halfway through and heading wrong direction" waste.

📋 Prerequisites: Chapter 24 - Agent SDK

1. What You'll Learn


2. Coding Plan Mechanism

(1) When to Use

Scenario Need Plan? Reason
Multi-file refactoring ✅ Yes Large impact scope
Architecture changes ✅ Yes Irreversible direction
Data migration ✅ Yes Data risk high
Simple bug fix ❌ No Small impact
Single file addition ❌ No Low risk

▶ Example 1: Trigger Coding Plan

TEXT 📖 Display only
# Method 1: /plan command
> /plan Migrate auth from Session to JWT

# Method 2: Include "plan first" in instruction
> Migrate auth from Session to JWT, plan first then execute

# Method 3: Auto-trigger (large tasks)
> Refactor entire project's error handling

3. Plan Generation

(1) Plan Structure

TEXT 📖 Display only
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Coding Plan: Session → JWT Auth Migration
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

## Goal
Migrate authentication from Session to JWT

## Impact Scope
- Modified files: 12
- New files: 3
- Deleted files: 2
- DB changes: None

## Execution Steps

### Step 1: Create JWT utility module
- New src/auth/jwt.ts
- Implement token generation, verification, refresh
- Write unit tests

### Step 2: Modify auth middleware
- Modify src/middleware/auth.ts
- Change from Session to JWT verification
- Keep interface unchanged

### Step 3: Modify login/register routes
- Modify src/routes/auth.ts
- Return JWT token instead of setting Session

### Step 4: Modify protected routes
- Modify 8 route files
- Adjust auth check method

### Step 5: Clean up Session code
- Delete session config
- Remove express-session dependency

## Risk Assessment
- 🔴 High: Middleware migration may affect all logged-in users
- 🟡 Medium: Token refresh logic needs careful design
- 🟢 Low: Utility module independent, doesn't affect existing code

## Estimate
- Tokens: ~80K
- Time: ~15 min
- Cost: ~$1.60

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Confirm execution? [y/n/modify]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

▶ Example 2: Review and Modify Plan

TEXT 📖 Display only
> Step 5 doesn't need Session deletion, keep compatibility for 2 weeks

Claude Code:
  Updated plan:
  Step 5: Keep Session compatibility
  - Don't delete express-session
  - Add dual auth support (Session + JWT)
  - Clean up Session code after 2 weeks

  Confirm? [y/n/modify] y
  Starting execution...

4. Plan Execution and Verification

(1) Step-by-Step Execution

TEXT 📖 Display only
[Step 1/5] Create JWT utility module
  → Creating src/auth/jwt.ts
  → Running: npm test -- jwt.test.ts
  ✅ Step 1 complete

/checkpoint "jwt-module-complete"

[Step 2/5] Modify auth middleware
  → Modifying src/middleware/auth.ts
  → Running: npm test -- auth.test.ts
  ✅ Step 2 complete

[Step 3/5] Modify login/register routes
  ✅ Step 3 complete

(2) Handling Problems

TEXT 📖 Display only
[Step 4/5] Modify protected routes
  → Running: npm test
  ❌ 3 tests failed
  → Root cause: Some routes depend on req.session
  → Fix: Map JWT payload to req.user in middleware
  → Re-running: npm test ✅

5. Best Practices

(1) Plan Review Checklist

Check Item Description
Impact scope Which files modified/added/deleted?
Risk assessment What are high/medium/low risk points?
Rollback plan Can each step be rolled back?
Dependencies Are steps sequential or parallel?
Test strategy How to verify each step?
Token estimate Total consumption within budget?

(2) Execution Discipline

Rule Description
Step-by-step confirm Check each step before continuing
Checkpoints Create checkpoint after key steps
Test first Run tests to verify each step
Adjust timely Modify plan when issues arise
Cost monitoring Check /cost each step

6. Comprehensive Example: Large Migration with Plan

TEXT 📖 Display only
> /plan Migrate entire microservice project from JavaScript to TypeScript

Claude Code generates detailed plan:

## Phase 1: Infrastructure (1-2 hours)
  Step 1: Install TypeScript and type definitions
  Step 2: Create tsconfig.json (loose mode first)
  Step 3: Configure build scripts

## Phase 2: Shared Modules (2-3 hours)
  Step 4: Migrate shared/types/ (5 files)
  Step 5: Migrate shared/utils/ (8 files)

## Phase 3: Service Modules (3-4 hours, parallelizable)
  Step 6: Migrate user-service/ (12 files)
  Step 7: Migrate order-service/ (15 files)
  Step 8: Migrate payment-service/ (10 files)

## Phase 4: Strict Mode (1-2 hours)
  Step 9: Enable strict mode
  Step 10: Fix all type errors
  Step 11: Full test verification

Total: Modify 53 files, New 8 files
Estimate: ~200K tokens, ~$4.00

> Execute by Phase, /checkpoint after each Phase

[Phase 1 complete] /checkpoint "ts-infra"
[Phase 2 complete] /checkpoint "shared-modules"
[Phase 3 complete] /checkpoint "services"
[Phase 4 complete] /checkpoint "strict-mode"

✅ All tests passed, migration complete!

❓ FAQ

Q How many extra Tokens does Coding Plan consume?
A About 10-20% more for the planning step. But avoids wrong-direction waste, actually saves overall.
Q Can plans be saved?
A Yes. Plans output in Markdown; copy to file for reference.
Q Small tasks need Plans?
A No. Simple bug fixes and single-file additions are more efficient without plans. Plans suit large-impact tasks.
Q Must follow the plan exactly?
A No. You can modify, skip, or reorder steps. Plans guide, not constrain.
Q Can I generate multiple plans to compare?
A Yes. Ask Claude Code "generate 2-3 approaches and compare", choose the best.
Q Plan vs Skill difference?
A Plans are task-specific temporary planning; Skills are reusable standard workflows. One-time big tasks use Plans; repetitive workflows use Skills.

📖 Summary


📝 Exercises

  1. Basic (⭐): Use /plan for a 3-step modification task, compare with no-plan execution.
  2. Intermediate (⭐⭐): Use Coding Plan for 5+ step refactoring, create checkpoints at each step.
  3. Advanced (⭐⭐⭐): Generate Plan for 10+ step large migration, execute in phases, record Token and time per Phase.
Web-Tutorial.com

Web-Tutorial Tech Team

A team of developers maintaining programming tutorials. Each tutorial is written and reviewed by developers with expertise in that field. We work to keep our content accurate and reliable — if you spot an issue, please let us know.

100%

🙏 帮我们做得更好

我们是刚上线的编程教程站,几个人的小团队,精力有限。页面虽经检查,难免还有疏漏——链接失效、排版错乱、内容有误、语言生硬……

如果您发现了,麻烦告诉我们,我们会在收到反馈后第一时间进行修复,再次感谢您的光临 🙏