Finally, Building
You’ve got your requirements, your look, your screen rules, and a plan you’ve read and approved. Now the fun part: building.
And because you did all that thinking first, building is mostly calm. You just follow one simple rule:
One small step at a time. Check each one before the next.
Why Not Just Build It All at Once?
It’s tempting to type “build the whole website” and wait. Here’s why that goes badly:
When everything is built at once, problems pile up on top of each other. By the end, you can’t tell which part caused which problem, and fixing one can break another.
When you build in small steps, each problem shows up right when it appears, while it’s still small and easy to fix.
| All at once | Small steps | |
|---|---|---|
| Problems | Found at the end, tangled together | Found right away, one at a time |
| Fixing | Hard: “which part broke this?” | Easy: “the step I just did” |
| Save points | One, at the end (if it works) | One after every working step |
| Your control | You find out what you got at the end | You steer the whole way |
The Rhythm
Every milestone in your PLAN.md goes through the same four beats:
- Ask for one milestone. “Do step 2 of the plan: the home page.”
- Watch it work. Auto mode on, eyes on the screen. Esc if it wanders.
- Look at the result on localhost. Click everything. Check the phone-sized view (F12, then Ctrl+Shift+M).
- Save it. “Save a checkpoint and push it.” Then tick it off in the plan.
Then /clear, and start the next milestone with a fresh whiteboard. Your notebook, requirements and plan are all in files, so nothing is lost.
“Done” Means “Go Look”
This is the heart of the always-check habit.
When Claude says a step is done, that means it thinks it’s done. Usually it’s right. Sometimes it isn’t:
- It might have misunderstood what you meant.
- It might have changed something you didn’t ask for.
- It might say it works when it doesn’t quite.
Claude isn’t lying when this happens. It’s just very confident, even when it’s wrong. So you check. Every time.
Claude builds. You check. That’s the partnership.
A few quick checks that catch most problems:
- Click every button and link on the part that changed.
- Look at the phone-sized view.
- Ask Claude: “What exactly did you change in this step?” If the list has something you didn’t expect, ask about it.
How to Ask for a Step
Point Claude at the plan, and name the step:
Let's do step 3 of @PLAN.md: the gallery. Only that step. When you're done, start the preview so I can check it.The words “only that step” matter. Without them, an eager Claude might helpfully start on step 4 too.
When you’ve checked it and you’re happy:
Looks great. Save a checkpoint, push it, and tick off step 3 in PLAN.md.Try it
Start building your website. Take the first step from your PLAN.md, and go through the full rhythm: ask, watch, look, save. Then /clear and do the next one.
See an example prompt
Let's do step 1 of @PLAN.md. Only that step. When it's done, start the preview and tell me what to look at.After checking it in the browser:
It works. Save a checkpoint, push it, and tick off step 1 in PLAN.md.Then:
/clear