Plan the Menu

In First Kitchen, every dish fit in one order: ask, watch, taste. A comment card box doesn't. It has a face people see, an ear that listens, a memory that keeps, and a private corner where you read. Order all of that in one breath and you'll get a heroic, tangled attempt — the agent equivalent of a kitchen trying to plate four courses at once.

The graduate move is embarrassingly simple: make the plan a thing you can read, then feed it to the agent one step at a time. In Lesson 2 of First Kitchen you learned to make the agent interview you before building. Today that interview grows up: it produces a written menu.

What you'll plate today

A PLAN.md with three steps you actually understand — and step one already cooked: the front of your comment card box, styled like yours.

Ingredients

• Your dinner-service folder from Lesson 1
• About 30 minutes

Cook

1. Interview first, menu second

Open the kitchen and order:

We're building this project's dish: a comment card box. Guests
visit one page, write a short note with their name, and drop it
in. I can read every card in a private view later.

Before you build anything: interview me, up to five questions,
one at a time — who my guests are, what the page should feel
like, what a comment card should ask for.

Then write PLAN.md: exactly three steps, each one small enough
to cook in one sitting, each ending with something I can SEE.
Plain words, no jargon. Then stop and wait — do not start
building.

Answer the interview with opinions, not shrugs — you know how this works. Then read PLAN.md like you'd read a contract. Three steps, probably shaped like: the face (page and form), the ear (the form actually listens), the memory (cards survive). If a step reads like fog — "set up the backend infrastructure" — push back:

Rewrite step 2 in plain kitchen words. What will I see when
it's done?

A plan you can't explain to a friend is not your plan yet. That sentence is most of this lesson.

2. Cook step one — and only step one

Cook step 1 of PLAN.md — just the front of the card box: the
page my guests will see, with a title, one warm line of
invitation, and the card form (name + note + a button). The
form doesn't need to work yet — looks first, ears next lesson.
Open it in my browser. Follow my CLAUDE.md taste rules.
Touch nothing from step 2 or 3.

That last line — touch nothing from step 2 or 3 — is the discipline that keeps multi-step projects sane. Agents, like enthusiastic cooks, love to "also just quickly" build ahead. Off-plan work is work you haven't tasted.

Taste the result with your Lesson 3 loop: wrong warmth? Cramped? Say what's off, ask again.

3. Mark the menu

Mark step 1 done in PLAN.md with today's date and one line on
what we actually built. Then make a save point: "step 1 — the
face". And add a rule to CLAUDE.md: we cook from PLAN.md, one
step at a time; if I ask for something outside the plan, tell
me which step it belongs to first.

Your project now has three kinds of memory, and they do different jobs: CLAUDE.md remembers how we cook, PLAN.md remembers what's left, save points remember what was. Together they're why you can close the laptop mid-project tonight and pick up cold on Thursday without re-explaining anything.

4. Test the pickup (thirty seconds)

Prove that last claim. Type /exit, start claude fresh, and ask:

Where are we, and what's next?

A well-kept kitchen answers from its notebook and its menu: step 1 done, step 2 is the ear. If the answer is vague, your PLAN.md notes are too thin — have it fatten them now, while the context is fresh.

When it burns

• The plan has seven steps — "Merge these into three. I'd rather have three steps I understand than seven I don't."
• It built the whole app in step 2's clothing — it happens; enthusiasm is the failure mode. Restore the save point, then re-order step 1 with the touch nothing line. This is why the save came first.
• The interview asked you technical questions — bounce them back: "You're the cook — pick for me and note the choice in PLAN.md in plain words."
• The form looks nothing like your First Kitchen taste — your CLAUDE.md rules from Lesson 1 were probably thinner than you remembered. Add the missing taste rule now; this file compounds.

Order up

□ PLAN.md exists: three steps, each one you could explain aloud
□ Step 1 is cooked — the card box has a face in your style
□ PLAN.md is marked: step 1 done, dated, described
□ A fresh session answered "where are we?" correctly

Next up — Lesson 03: A Form That Listens. Right now your beautiful form is a prop — press the button and nothing happens, because nobody's listening. Next lesson your project gets its first working ear, and you'll meet the difference between a page and an app.

Stuck on a step? Question box below — that's what it's for.