Last week I wrote about the workflow: stop trying to write the perfect plan yourself, and let the AI build it with you through a conversation. A few people asked the obvious follow-up — okay, but what do I actually type?
Fair question. A workflow is useless if you don't know the words that trigger it. So here are the exact prompts I use. They work in Claude Code's Plan Mode, but nothing here is tool-specific — paste them into any agent before it writes a line of code.
The problem with "just describe your idea"
If you open a chat and say "build me an app that does X," the agent does what agents do: it fills every gap with an assumption and starts coding. You get a plan you never agreed to.
The fix is to change the agent's job before it starts. Don't ask it to build. Ask it to interview you, propose a structure, and argue with itself. Here's how.
