We do not use Claude Code as a magic textbox. We use it as a member of a small software factory: one task, one plan, one worktree, one reviewable diff.
Pane came out of that workflow. We were already running Claude Code, Codex, and other terminal agents in parallel. The painful part was not the model. It was the operating system around the model: terminals, branches, logs, diffs, review, and remembering which agent owned which task.
the loop
Most tasks go through the same commands: /discussion, /plan, and /implement. Discussion is where we force ambiguity into the open. Planning is where we turn intent into file-level work. Implementation is where the agent writes code and we hold it to the plan.
That sounds slower than prompting directly. It is not. The expensive failures are not typing failures. They are wrong-shape failures: plausible code, weak intent, missing integration, no finish line.
the .claude directory is product code
Our Claude setup lives in the public Pane repo: github.com/dcouple/Pane/tree/main/.claude. The commands, agents, and instructions are not private ceremony. They are part of how the product gets built.
- commands define the workflow
- agents split research, implementation, and review
- plans preserve intent so implementation cannot quietly shrink the task
- reviews check whether the work actually reached the user-facing path
worktrees are the unit of parallelism
Running three agents in one checkout is asking for confusion. We use worktrees because each agent needs its own branch, its own working directory, and its own diff. Pane makes that boring. Create a session, run the agent, review the diff, decide what ships.
The important part is not that worktrees exist. It is that they are attached to the agent workflow. A bare worktree is just another path to remember. A Pane session is an owned piece of work.
what we do not automate away
We do not want an agent to disappear for hours and come back with a giant diff we are supposed to trust. We want small plans, visible terminals, reviewable diffs, and a human making the ship/no-ship call. That is the product philosophy behind Pane.
Related: git worktrees for AI agents and running Claude Code and Codex on Windows.