Why can't Claude write the spec?
All of that thinking, planning, rewriting, etc. takes almost as long as it takes Claude to actually deliver the feature. The big features Claude writes take ~30-45min of uninterrupted coding to deliver (I just checked the last feature was 39m 41s for +1,610/-26). To write that same code would have taken me probably 2 days.
Solution spaces for even seemingly simple problems is incredibly large. There's a reason there's a thousand different types of nails and a million types of screw heads. Just making every screw head Phillips (or pick another) doesn't just make things work.
But you need expertise to know these things. They're the issues that are subtle and appear to work but you end up breaking things (often invisibly) and just end up chasing problem after problem. It looks like a new problem but it's rooted in something else.
I feel I'm at the point now where the time the LLM takes to deliver a feature, no matter how big, is nearly inconsequential. Because while it is in the process of delivering the feature, I am writing the next spec, and by the time I finish the spec the agent is waiting for the next feature. And at that point I have to review it's code, give it feedback, review it's fixes, merge, etc. All of the "waiting" is on me. It is basically delivering features as fast as I can write specs and could only get faster if I write specs faster.
either you tell claude or it tells you/is probably wrong
but, you can still be more agile i think, and just make the thing and see of it solves the problem or not, and if not, build something else