Comment by aymandfire

I see what you mean, but I’m saying something else, I think plan modes were solving two different problems:

1. giving the agent sufficiently precise instructions 2. helping the human understand what’s being built

I think #1 is increasingly going away as models get better. #2 is a separate problem, and I actually think it matters more as agents get more capable. I’m not arguing that human understanding should disappear with plan mode.

I’m also not pushing this on behalf of a model lab, I don’t represent one. These are lessons I learned from my own mistakes building Nuanced (https://www.nuanced.dev). We built around a very explicit plan-oriented workflow because that’s how I used to work. I spent years at GitHub writing ADRs, RFCs, and design docs, and I still really like writing because it’s how I clarify my own thinking.

What changed for me is that AI-generated plans don’t give me that same effect. The agent reads between the lines, generates a lot of detailed prose, and now I’m parsing decisions and assumptions I didn’t actually make.

So I still think human understanding deserves a first-class primitive. I’m just increasingly unconvinced that a big blob of generated text is the right one, especially as we move toward many agents working in parallel.