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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What's happening with the other 90%?