Plan mode is dead
A software developer reflects on the failure of their 'plan mode' coding app, arguing that AI's rapid code generation makes traditional planning abstractions obsolete. They suggest that while AI can write code quickly, humans still struggle to maintain a coherent mental model of complex systems.
Why it matters
This highlights a growing tension in software engineering between the speed of AI-generated code and the human necessity for architectural oversight and product strategy.
Earlier this year, I believed planning was going to become the most important part of building software with AI.
My belief in this idea was so strong that I built and launched an entire desktop coding app around it. Nuanced was motivated by the observation that AI had radically increased the speed and volume of code generation, but interfaces required to support this new pace of working hadn’t caught up yet.
Nuanced’s approach to planning failed, but it also revealed to me how plan modes more broadly aren’t as useful anymore. Historically, plan modes served two purposes: (1) they specified instructions that were sufficiently precise enough for an agent, and (2) they helped humans understand what they were building.
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