Eight habits so far, each useful on its own. But the real skill isn’t any one of them — it’s running them together, in order, until a “bigger task” stops feeling scary and starts feeling routine. Let’s watch the whole thing on one real example.
The workflow is the skill. No single feature here is impressive alone; the value is in chaining them so a big task becomes a series of small, checkable steps.
The task: add a blog section to my-site. A new blog.html, a link from index.html, posts styled to match. Multiple files, a few real decisions, an unknown or two. A big one. Here’s how the whole level flows through it.
The full loop, start to finish
1. Spot the size. (Lesson 7.1) You read the task and run the four signals. Multiple files? Yes — a new page, the homepage link, the styles. Decisions? One page of posts or a page each, what a post looks like. Unknowns? You’re not sure how the nav is wired across the existing pages. That’s three signals. Big task. Don’t just ask.
2. Enter plan mode. (Lesson 7.2) Shift+Tab until you see plan mode, then ask for the feature. Claude reads the code and proposes a plan instead of charging in. Nothing changes yet.
3. Read the plan critically. (Lesson 7.3) The plan says it’ll pull the recent contact messages out of messages.json to “fill the blog with content.” That’s a wrong assumption with a privacy smell — those are real messages, not blog posts. You push back: “Don’t touch messages.json — use placeholder posts.” Claude revises. Cost of catching it here: one sentence.
4. Slice it. (Lesson 7.5) The revised plan is still five steps. Rather than approve all five, you take the readable slice first: “Start by showing me exactly which files you’d touch and what changes in each.” You see the list, confirm nothing sensitive slipped through, then let it build.
5. Watch the TODOs. (Lesson 7.4) As it works, the checklist ticks along — blog.html, the homepage link, the styles, the placeholder posts. You can see exactly where it is and what’s left, and you know the seams where you could step in.
6. Course-correct if it drifts. (Lesson 7.6) On the styling step, Claude starts restyling the whole homepage. Esc. “Just the blog posts — leave index.html’s styles alone.” Back on track in one sentence, before the drift spread.
7. Compact when it runs long. (Lesson 7.8) A few files in, the session’s gotten long and Claude starts re-asking about something you settled early. Not a bad model — a full desk. You /compact, it keeps a summary of what matters, and carries on the same task with room to work again.
8. Restart if it truly stalls. (Lesson 7.7) This time it didn’t — but if Claude had looped three times on the same broken nav markup, you’d have stopped, started fresh, and brought the lesson with you instead of nudging a stuck thread.
Blog’s live. messages.json untouched. You never lost more than a sentence to any wrong turn.
Why this is the close
Look back at that flow. Not one step was clever. Plan mode is a keystroke. Reading a plan is reading. Esc is one key. Slicing is just choosing a smaller bite. Individually, none of it would impress anyone.
Together, they’re the difference between handing Claude a big task and hoping, versus handing it a big task and steering. That’s the whole point of this level — and it’s a skill you’ll use on nearly everything from here on.
What’s next
You can now take on work too big for one prompt and steer it home. But finishing the work isn’t the end — you have to land it: save it properly, share it, and get it reviewed. That’s Level 8, Git the Claude way — commits, pull requests, and handling review comments without the usual git headaches.