I Asked the Agent to Plan Before It Coded and Saved Three Days

I used to describe a feature and let the agent build immediately. It felt fast. It wasn't. The architecture got decided implicitly by whatever the agent tried first.

When that first approach was wrong, everything built on top of it was wrong too.

Now I ask for an outline before any code. A paragraph or two describing the approach. I review it. I correct it. Then I say build.

The planning phase takes an hour. It has saved me multiple three-day rewrites.

Do you let the agent plan, or do you just describe and hope the first approach is right?