Mastering Claude Code: part 4 planning specs tasks using native Claude Code tools.

https://spillwave.com/ Subscribe to Rick’s newsletter to see videos and guides. Links below. Rick is a Claude Certified Architect, AI systems practitioner, and builder of production multi-agent systems. He is currently working on authoring a book on Harness Engineering with Manning publishing. He created Skilz, a universal agent skill installer supporting 30+ coding agents including Claude Code, Gemini, Copilot, and Cursor, and co-founded one of the largest agentic skill marketplaces. Today, Rick and the Spillwave team works with leaders and teams who want to move beyond AI experiments and build real AI capability inside their companies. He helps organizations adopt AI safely, train their people, redesign workflows, and build practical AI systems that create measurable business value. Ready to make your company AI-first? Connect with Rick on LinkedIn, Substack or Medium, book him to speak or train your team, or visit Spillwave to explore mentoring, training, and custom AI solutions for your organization.   / rickhigh   https://substack.com/@rickhightower1   / richardhightower   https://spillwave.com/ Claude Code: Spec-Driven Development - Why Your AI Coding Sessions Fall Apart at Hour Three Part 4: Stop coding blind: the spec-driven workflow built-in that turns Claude Code from a function writer into a feature builder. The relief of never again coming back to a half-finished feature you can no longer reason about. Claude Code already ships a complete task list, spec-driven, project-management system. Most developers never find it, so they bolt on tooling that the tool was designed to make unnecessary. Summary: In this article, working engineers love Claude Code for writing functions and quietly resent it for building features. The fix is not a plugin or a hand-rolled TODO.md. It is spec-driven development with Claude Code, built from four native layers: plan mode, the interview-to-spec pattern, the live task list, and a durable todos.json mirror. You will learn when to use each layer, how to wire them together, and how to hand Claude a spec and walk away. Part 4 of "Claude Code, Day-to-Day," a 19-part guide to mastering Claude Code for working engineers.