# Plan mode can make Claude Code tasks more reliable

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/plan-mode-can-make-claude-code-tasks-more-reliable/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Boris Cherny](https://realalpha.app/builders/boris-cherny/) · Boris Cherny is creator and head of Claude Code at Anthropic. · Created Claude Code at Anthropic and leads its team; previously spent about five years at Meta.
- Host: [Lenny Rachitsky](https://realalpha.app/people/lenny-rachitsky/) · Host, Lenny's Podcast · Spent seven years at Airbnb; his product newsletter has over 1M subscribers.
- Show: Lenny's Podcast
- Episode: [Head of Claude Code: What happens after coding is solved | Boris Cherny](https://realalpha.app/v/We7BZVKbCVw/), Feb 19, 2026
- Moment: 1:08:42 to 1:11:26 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/plan-mode-can-make-claude-code-tasks-more-reliable/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/We7BZVKbCVw/?t=4122

## Quote

> “we inject one sentence into the model's prompt to say **please don't write any code yet**”
> — [Boris Cherny](https://realalpha.app/builders/boris-cherny/) at [1:09:54](https://realalpha.app/v/We7BZVKbCVw/?t=4194) · Lenny's Podcast

## Takeaways

1. He recommends using the most capable model available.
2. He starts about 80% of tasks in plan mode.
3. The same agent works across terminal, desktop, mobile, and Slack.

## About this segment

He recommends the strongest model, plan mode for most tasks, and trying different interfaces. Plan mode adds a single instruction not to code yet; after approving the plan, he lets the model execute.

From “Head of Claude Code: What happens after coding is solved | Boris Cherny”, Feb 19, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/We7BZVKbCVw/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[1:08:48](https://realalpha.app/v/We7BZVKbCVw/?t=4128) What are a couple of pro tips that you could share? I will give a caveat, which is there's no one right way to use quad code. So I can share some tips, but honestly, this is a dev tool. Developers are all different. Developers have different preferences. They have different environments. So there's just so many ways to use these tools. There's no one right way. You sort of have to find your own path.

[1:09:08](https://realalpha.app/v/We7BZVKbCVw/?t=4148) Luckily, you can ask quad code. It's able to make recommendations. It can edit your settings. It kind of knows about itself. So it can help. It can help with that. A few tips that generally I find pretty useful. So number one is just use the most capable model. Currently, that's Opus 4.6. I have maximum effort enabled always. The thing that happens is sometimes people try to use a less expensive model like Sonnet or something like this, but because it's less intelligent, it actually takes more tokens in the end to do the same task.

[1:09:35](https://realalpha.app/v/We7BZVKbCVw/?t=4175) And so it's actually not obvious that it's cheaper if you use a less expensive model. Often it's actually cheaper and less token intensive if you use the most capable model because it can just do the same thing much faster with less correction, less handholding and so on. so that's the first step is just use the best model the second one is use plan mode i start almost all of my tasks in plan mode maybe like 80 percent and plan mode is actually really simple all it is is we inject one sentence into the model's prompt to say please don't write any code yet that's it like there's actually like nothing fancy going on it's just the simplest thing and so for people that are in the terminal it's just shift tab twice and that gets you into plan mode uh for people in the desktop app there's a little button on web there's a little button

[1:10:19](https://realalpha.app/v/We7BZVKbCVw/?t=4219) it's coming pretty soon to mobile also uh and we just launched it for the svak integration too uh so plan mode is the second one and uh essentially the model would just go back and forth with you once the plan looks good then you let the model execute i auto accept edits after that because if the plan looks good it's just going to one shot it it'll get it right the first time almost every time with opus 4.6 and then maybe the third tip is just play around with with different interfaces.

[1:10:45](https://realalpha.app/v/We7BZVKbCVw/?t=4245) I think a lot of people, when they think about Cloud Code, they think about a terminal. And of course we support every terminal. We support like Mac, Windows, like whatever terminal you might use that works perfectly. But we actually support a lot of other form factors too. Like we have like iOS and Android apps. We have a desktop app. There's the Slack integration. There's all sorts of things that we support.

[1:11:04](https://realalpha.app/v/We7BZVKbCVw/?t=4264) So I would just like play around with these. And again, it's like every engineer is different. Everyone that's building is different. Just find the thing that feels right to you and use that. You don't have to use a terminal. it's the same quad agent running everywhere. Amazing. Okay, just a couple more questions to round things out. What's your take on Codex?