Research-Plan-Implement workflow breaks projects into context-controllable phases¶
Insight: Breaking complex projects into Research (understand codebase), Plan (detail exact steps and files), and Implement (execute in phases) phases enables effective context management. Sub-agents should handle research and file-finding to prevent parent-agent context pollution. Human review should focus on high-leverage artifacts (research and plans) rather than code, since errors cascade from bad planning to thousands of incorrect lines.
Detail: Intentional compaction via progress.md summaries pauses work periodically to reset context. Models like Sonnet 4.5 benefit from complete context resets between sessions. The approach keeps context utilization at 40-60% while maintaining correctness, completeness, size, and trajectory for brownfield codebases.