The ticket
A payments team needs to add a new refund status to an existing service, update the API response, and make sure the reconciliation report picks it up. Three files are obvious, two are not.
The habit
- Context first. The repository has a CLAUDE.md that explains the service layout, test commands and the team's conventions, so the engineer doesn't repeat them in every prompt.
- Plan before code. In plan mode, Claude Code reads the relevant files and proposes the change, including the two non-obvious files: a serializer and the report query. The engineer corrects one assumption before any code is written.
- Tests first. The engineer asks for failing tests that describe the new status, runs them, then asks for the implementation.
- Small diffs. The change is split into two commits that a reviewer can read in five minutes each.
- Review it like a colleague's code. The engineer reads every line, asks Claude Code to explain one choice, and rejects an unnecessary refactor it slipped in.
- Make it repeatable. The team saves a custom slash command for adding a new status end-to-end, so the next one starts from the same checklist.
The point is not that the tool wrote the code. It is that the engineer stayed in control of scope, tests and review, and the team captured the pattern for next time.
