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I was using this and superpowers but eventually, Plan mode became enough and I prefer to steer Claude Code myself. These frameworks are great for fire-and-forge

I was using this and superpowers but eventually, Plan mode became enough and I prefer to steer Claude Code myself. These frameworks are great for fire-and-forget tasks, especially when there is some research involved but they burn 10x more tokens, in my experience. I was always hitting the Max plan limits for no discernable benefit in the outcomes I was getting. But this will vary a lot depending on how people prefer to work.

jghn 7mo ago
I've gone the other way recently, shifting from pure plan mode to superpowers. I was reminded of it due to the announcement of the latest version. It is perhaps confirmation bias on my part but I've been finding it's doing a better job with similar problems than I was getting with base plan mode. I've been attributing this to its multiple layers of cross checks and self-reviews. Yes, I could do that by hand of course, but I find superpowers is automating what I was already trying to accomplish in this regard.
- gtirloni 7mo ago
  Yes, it does help in that way. Maybe I'm still struggling to let go and let AI take the wheel from beginning to end but I enjoy the exploratory part of the whole process (investigating possible solutions, trying theories, doing little spikes, etc, all with CC's assistance). When it's time to actually code, I just let it do its own thing mostly unsupervised. I do spend quite a lot of time on spec writing.
  - jghn 7mo ago
    That’s part of what I’ve liked about it over plan mode. Again not a scientific measurement but I feel it’s better at interactive brainstorming and researching the big picture with me. And it’s built in multiple checkpoints also give me more space to pivot or course correct.
hatmanstack 7mo ago
Why are we using cli wrappers if you're using Claude Code? I get if you need something like Codex but they released sub agents today so maybe not even that, but it's an unnecessary wrapper for Claude Code.
- gtirloni 7mo ago
  GSD and superpowers aren't CLI wrappers?
  - hatmanstack 7mo ago
    It's a cli wrapper. Don't know how you could say it wasn't. edit: GSD is a cli wrapper, Superpowers not so much. Both are over-engineered for an easy problem IMHO.
    - ramoz 7mo ago
      Both are dramatically over-engineered. & That's okay. I find them to be products of an industry reconciling how to really work with AI as well as optimize workflows around it. Similar to Gastown et al. Otherwise, if you can own your own thinking, orchestrating, and steering of agents, you're in a more mature place.
      - hatmanstack 7mo ago
        I think that's fair, if they were created today I'm sure the creators would make different decisions, a penalty of getting there first.
      - mycall 7mo ago
        I also see it as fleeting as right when you have it figured out, a new model will work differently and may/may not need all their engineering layers.
    - hermanzegerman 7mo ago
      No it's not. It's using Skills and Agents and runs always inside of Claude Code, Gemini CLI etc...
abhisek 7mo ago
I have been using superpowers for Gryph development for a while. Love the brainstorming and exploration that it brings in. Haven’t really compared token usage but something in my bucket.
SayThatSh 7mo ago
I've played around a bit with the plugins and as you've said, plan mode really handles things fine for the most part. I've got various workflows I run through in Claude and I've found having CC create custom skills/agents created for them gets me 80% of the way there. It's also nice that letting the Claude file refer to them rather than trying to define entire workflows within it goes a long way. It'll still forget things here and there, leading to wasted tokens as it realizes it's being dumb and corrects itself, but nothing too crazy. At least, it's more than enough to let me continue using it naturally rather than memorizing a million slash commands to manually evoke.
andai 7mo ago
What's happening with the other 90%?
marcus_holmes 7mo ago
I ended up grafting the brainstorm, design, and implementation planning skills from Superpowers onto a Ralph-based implementation layer that doesn't ask for my input once the implementation plan is complete. I have to run it in a Docker sandbox because of the dangerously set permissions but that is probably a good idea anyway. It's working, and I'm enjoying how productive it is, but it feels like a step on a journey rather than the actual destination. I'm looking forward to seeing where this journey ends up.
- auggierose 7mo ago
  If it is working, why is it just a step on a journey? What is missing?
  - marcus_holmes 7mo ago
    It's a kludged-together dev process made up of two different systems in a docker container so potential damage is contained. It's not ideal ;) Neither of those two systems feel evolved either. Superpowers is very cool, but there are holes still. And Ralph feels like an experiment that worked so they published it. This is all going somewhere, evolving and moving towards some beautiful system. Or maybe the usual dev ecosystem shit - it'll be a great prototype and then it'll get overthought, overcomplicated and overengineered and end up less usable than what we had before *glares at React*
- jghn 7mo ago
  did you hand modify the superpowers skills or are you managing this some other way?
  - hatmanstack 7mo ago
    For me, I just created my own prompt pipeline, with a nod towards GANs all of the necessary permissions get surfaced so I don't need to babysit it, and all are relatively simple. No need for Yolo or Dangerously setting Permissions.
  - marcus_holmes 7mo ago
Rapzid 7mo ago
I use GitHub Copilot and unfortunately there has been a weird regression in the bundled Plan mode. It suddenly, when they added the new plan memory, started getting both VERY verbose in the plan output and also vague in the details. It's adding a lot of step that are like "design" and "figure out" and railroads you into implementation without asking follow-up questions.
- whalesalad 7mo ago
  I find that even with opus 4.6, copilot feels like it’s handicapped. I’m not sure if it’s related to memory or what but if I give two tasks to opus4.6 one in CC and one in Copilot, CC is substantially better. I’ve been really enjoying Codex CLI recently though. It seems to do just as well as Opus 4.6, but using the standard GPT 5.4
  - nfg 7mo ago
    As a matter of interest are you using the copilot cli?
    - whalesalad 7mo ago
      yeah. copilot cli using opus 4.6 vs claude code using opus 4.6
      - nfg 7mo ago
        If you could share I’d be really interested in hearing a concrete example of the two behaving differently. I work in Microsoft (not on copilot - though I’m an heavy user, and use Claude code in a personal capacity) and would be quite happy to repro and report back to the copilot cli team who are responsive.
  - chaostheory 7mo ago
    I have the same experience with Antigravity and Gemini CLI, both using Gemini 3 Pro. CLI works on the problem with more effort and time. Meanwhile, antigravity writes shitty python scripts for a few seconds and calls it a day. The agent harness matters a lot
healsdata 7mo ago
Just tried GSD and Plan Mode on the same exact task (prompt in an MD file). Plan Mode had a plan and then base implementation in twenty minutes. GSD ran for hours to achieve the same thing. I reviewed the code from both and the GSD code was definitely written with the rest of the project and possibilities in mind, while the Claude Plan was just enough for the MVP. I can see both having their pros and cons depending on your workflow and size of the task.
whalesalad 7mo ago
Same experience. Superpowers are a little too overzealous at times. For coding especially I don’t like seeing a comprehensive design spec written (good) and then turning that into effectively the same doc but macro expanded to become a complete implementation with the literal code for the entire thing in a second doc (bad). Even for trivial changes I’d end up with a good and succinct -design.md, then an -implementation.md, then end with a swarm of sub agents getting into races while more or less just grabbing a block from the implementation file and writing it. A mess. I still enjoy superpowers brainstorming but will pull the chute towards the end and then deliver myself.
- gtirloni 7mo ago
  Yes. I sometimes had to specifically ask it to NOT add any code to the specs because that would be done at a later stage.
locknitpicker 7mo ago
> I was using this and superpowers but eventually, Plan mode became enough and I prefer to steer Claude Code myself. Plan mode is great, but to me that's just prompting your LLM agent of choice to generate an ad-hoc, imprecise, and incomplete spec. The downside of specs is that they can consume a lot of context window with things that are not needed for the task. When that is a concern, passing the spec to plan mode tends to mitigate the issue.
sigbottle 7mo ago
Yup yup yup. I burned literally a weeks worth of the 20$ claude subscription and then 20$ worth of API credits on gsdv2. To get like 500 LOC. And that was AFTER literally burning a weeks worth of codex and Claude 20$ plans and 50$ API credits and getting completely bumfucked - AI was faking out tests etc. I had better experiences just guiding the thing myself. It definitely was not a set and forget experience (6 hours of constant monitoring) but I was able to get a full research MVP that informed the next iteration with only 75% of a codex weekly plan.
- FromTheFirstIn 7mo ago
  You spent $25 on 500 LOC?
  - sigbottle 7mo ago
    Well, there were milestones and docs and extra scaffolding that the gsd system produces, but yes. and it didn't seem like progress was going to go any faster.
    - sigbottle 7mo ago
      Update: I finally got more weekly credits. 5% of codex 5.3 high 1 shot the small project just fine. Like... maybe the consumer harness engineering isn't there yet or codex is just cooking.

jghn 7mo ago

I've gone the other way recently, shifting from pure plan mode to superpowers. I was reminded of it due to the announcement of the latest version. It is perhaps confirmation bias on my part but I've been finding it's doing a better job with similar problems than I was getting with base plan mode. I've been attributing this to its multiple layers of cross checks and self-reviews. Yes, I could do that by hand of course, but I find superpowers is automating what I was already trying to accomplish in this regard.

gtirloni 7mo ago
Yes, it does help in that way. Maybe I'm still struggling to let go and let AI take the wheel from beginning to end but I enjoy the exploratory part of the whole process (investigating possible solutions, trying theories, doing little spikes, etc, all with CC's assistance). When it's time to actually code, I just let it do its own thing mostly unsupervised. I do spend quite a lot of time on spec writing.
- jghn 7mo ago
  That’s part of what I’ve liked about it over plan mode. Again not a scientific measurement but I feel it’s better at interactive brainstorming and researching the big picture with me. And it’s built in multiple checkpoints also give me more space to pivot or course correct.

hatmanstack 7mo ago

Why are we using cli wrappers if you're using Claude Code? I get if you need something like Codex but they released sub agents today so maybe not even that, but it's an unnecessary wrapper for Claude Code.

gtirloni 7mo ago
GSD and superpowers aren't CLI wrappers?
- hatmanstack 7mo ago
  It's a cli wrapper. Don't know how you could say it wasn't. edit: GSD is a cli wrapper, Superpowers not so much. Both are over-engineered for an easy problem IMHO.
  - ramoz 7mo ago
    Both are dramatically over-engineered. & That's okay. I find them to be products of an industry reconciling how to really work with AI as well as optimize workflows around it. Similar to Gastown et al. Otherwise, if you can own your own thinking, orchestrating, and steering of agents, you're in a more mature place.
    - hatmanstack 7mo ago
      I think that's fair, if they were created today I'm sure the creators would make different decisions, a penalty of getting there first.
    - mycall 7mo ago
      I also see it as fleeting as right when you have it figured out, a new model will work differently and may/may not need all their engineering layers.
  - hermanzegerman 7mo ago
    No it's not. It's using Skills and Agents and runs always inside of Claude Code, Gemini CLI etc...

abhisek 7mo ago

I have been using superpowers for Gryph development for a while. Love the brainstorming and exploration that it brings in. Haven’t really compared token usage but something in my bucket.

SayThatSh 7mo ago

I've played around a bit with the plugins and as you've said, plan mode really handles things fine for the most part. I've got various workflows I run through in Claude and I've found having CC create custom skills/agents created for them gets me 80% of the way there. It's also nice that letting the Claude file refer to them rather than trying to define entire workflows within it goes a long way. It'll still forget things here and there, leading to wasted tokens as it realizes it's being dumb and corrects itself, but nothing too crazy. At least, it's more than enough to let me continue using it naturally rather than memorizing a million slash commands to manually evoke.

andai 7mo ago

What's happening with the other 90%?

marcus_holmes 7mo ago

I ended up grafting the brainstorm, design, and implementation planning skills from Superpowers onto a Ralph-based implementation layer that doesn't ask for my input once the implementation plan is complete. I have to run it in a Docker sandbox because of the dangerously set permissions but that is probably a good idea anyway. It's working, and I'm enjoying how productive it is, but it feels like a step on a journey rather than the actual destination. I'm looking forward to seeing where this journey ends up.

auggierose 7mo ago
If it is working, why is it just a step on a journey? What is missing?
- marcus_holmes 7mo ago
  It's a kludged-together dev process made up of two different systems in a docker container so potential damage is contained. It's not ideal ;) Neither of those two systems feel evolved either. Superpowers is very cool, but there are holes still. And Ralph feels like an experiment that worked so they published it. This is all going somewhere, evolving and moving towards some beautiful system. Or maybe the usual dev ecosystem shit - it'll be a great prototype and then it'll get overthought, overcomplicated and overengineered and end up less usable than what we had before *glares at React*
jghn 7mo ago
did you hand modify the superpowers skills or are you managing this some other way?
- hatmanstack 7mo ago
  For me, I just created my own prompt pipeline, with a nod towards GANs all of the necessary permissions get surfaced so I don't need to babysit it, and all are relatively simple. No need for Yolo or Dangerously setting Permissions.
- marcus_holmes 7mo ago

Rapzid 7mo ago

I use GitHub Copilot and unfortunately there has been a weird regression in the bundled Plan mode. It suddenly, when they added the new plan memory, started getting both VERY verbose in the plan output and also vague in the details. It's adding a lot of step that are like "design" and "figure out" and railroads you into implementation without asking follow-up questions.

whalesalad 7mo ago
I find that even with opus 4.6, copilot feels like it’s handicapped. I’m not sure if it’s related to memory or what but if I give two tasks to opus4.6 one in CC and one in Copilot, CC is substantially better. I’ve been really enjoying Codex CLI recently though. It seems to do just as well as Opus 4.6, but using the standard GPT 5.4
- nfg 7mo ago
  As a matter of interest are you using the copilot cli?
  - whalesalad 7mo ago
    yeah. copilot cli using opus 4.6 vs claude code using opus 4.6
    - nfg 7mo ago
      If you could share I’d be really interested in hearing a concrete example of the two behaving differently. I work in Microsoft (not on copilot - though I’m an heavy user, and use Claude code in a personal capacity) and would be quite happy to repro and report back to the copilot cli team who are responsive.
- chaostheory 7mo ago
  I have the same experience with Antigravity and Gemini CLI, both using Gemini 3 Pro. CLI works on the problem with more effort and time. Meanwhile, antigravity writes shitty python scripts for a few seconds and calls it a day. The agent harness matters a lot

healsdata 7mo ago

Just tried GSD and Plan Mode on the same exact task (prompt in an MD file). Plan Mode had a plan and then base implementation in twenty minutes. GSD ran for hours to achieve the same thing. I reviewed the code from both and the GSD code was definitely written with the rest of the project and possibilities in mind, while the Claude Plan was just enough for the MVP. I can see both having their pros and cons depending on your workflow and size of the task.

whalesalad 7mo ago

Same experience. Superpowers are a little too overzealous at times. For coding especially I don’t like seeing a comprehensive design spec written (good) and then turning that into effectively the same doc but macro expanded to become a complete implementation with the literal code for the entire thing in a second doc (bad). Even for trivial changes I’d end up with a good and succinct -design.md, then an -implementation.md, then end with a swarm of sub agents getting into races while more or less just grabbing a block from the implementation file and writing it. A mess. I still enjoy superpowers brainstorming but will pull the chute towards the end and then deliver myself.

gtirloni 7mo ago
Yes. I sometimes had to specifically ask it to NOT add any code to the specs because that would be done at a later stage.

locknitpicker 7mo ago

> I was using this and superpowers but eventually, Plan mode became enough and I prefer to steer Claude Code myself. Plan mode is great, but to me that's just prompting your LLM agent of choice to generate an ad-hoc, imprecise, and incomplete spec. The downside of specs is that they can consume a lot of context window with things that are not needed for the task. When that is a concern, passing the spec to plan mode tends to mitigate the issue.

sigbottle 7mo ago

Yup yup yup. I burned literally a weeks worth of the 20$ claude subscription and then 20$ worth of API credits on gsdv2. To get like 500 LOC. And that was AFTER literally burning a weeks worth of codex and Claude 20$ plans and 50$ API credits and getting completely bumfucked - AI was faking out tests etc. I had better experiences just guiding the thing myself. It definitely was not a set and forget experience (6 hours of constant monitoring) but I was able to get a full research MVP that informed the next iteration with only 75% of a codex weekly plan.

FromTheFirstIn 7mo ago
You spent $25 on 500 LOC?
- sigbottle 7mo ago
  Well, there were milestones and docs and extra scaffolding that the gsd system produces, but yes. and it didn't seem like progress was going to go any faster.
  - sigbottle 7mo ago
    Update: I finally got more weekly credits. 5% of codex 5.3 high 1 shot the small project just fine. Like... maybe the consumer harness engineering isn't there yet or codex is just cooking.