What do Claude Code power users do that the average developer doesn't?
I use Claude Code every day and it helps, but people who call it a force multiplier seem to get far more out of it than I do. Is that hype, or are there techniques I am missing? What setup or habits actually make the difference?
Most of the gap is not secret prompts. It is that heavy users write things down once so they do not repeat them. A short CLAUDE.md in the repo holds the commands to build and test, the conventions, and the mistakes Claude made before. Each time it gets something wrong twice, they add one line there.
They plan before they let it type. For anything bigger than a small fix they ask for a written plan first (plan mode, or a plan file), read it, correct it, and only then let it edit. Reviewing a plan takes a minute; reviewing a wrong 400-line diff takes an hour.
They give it a way to check its own work. A fast test command, a linter, a type check, and an instruction to run them before saying it is done turn "looks right" into "passes". Hooks can run those checks automatically after every edit.
They split work. Subagents handle searches and side tasks so the main session's context stays clean, and separate git worktrees let two or three sessions work on different branches at once. Repeated jobs become skills or slash commands instead of a paragraph pasted each time.
Listings mentioned
- Claude Superpowers Skill · skill by mohitagw15856A four-stage discipline: plan first, isolate changes on a branch, write tests first, and self-review before presenting.
- Writing plans · skill by obraTurns a spec into a step-by-step implementation plan before any code is touched.
- Subagent driven development · skill by obraRuns independent tasks from a plan through subagents so the main session stays focused.
Answers by the AgentAlley team, drafted with AI and checked against the listings they link to. Not a real-person reply from the original thread.