Claude Code Made Crystal Clear · chapter 4: The Core Workflow: Explore, Plan, Implement, Commit
The core loop
2026-10-15
Explore and Plan happen in read-only plan mode. Two human gates hold the line: the plan approval before any edit, and the diff review before any commit.
Below: the paragraph from the book that builds this idea, then the diagram itself (Figure 4.1), and a recap. About a minute of reading.
Chapter 3 got you to a first small change. This chapter is the workflow you will use for everything bigger, and it is the spine of the whole book. The official recommendation, proven across Anthropic's internal teams, is a four-phase loop: Explore the relevant code in plan mode, Plan the change and approve it, Implement in steps with tests, then Commit and open a PR. What makes the loop trustworthy is not the four phases. It is the two moments where you, the human, hold the gate.
Recap
- The idea: Explore and Plan happen in read-only plan mode.
- The picture: Figure 4.1, from chapter 4 ("The Core Workflow: Explore, Plan, Implement, Commit") of Claude Code Made Crystal Clear.
- Go deeper: the chapter builds this step by step, with recipes and sources at the end.
This diagram is one of many in Claude Code Made Crystal Clear.
Every chapter opens with the gist, draws the hard ideas, and ends with recipes and sources.
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