The Client Sees the Plan Three Times Before I Write a Line

The client sees the plan for their site three times before Claude Code writes a line of it. Once as phase notes, once as a mockup, once as a checkpoint review.

I used to think the build was the hard part. These days the plan gets more of my attention than the code does, because that’s where a bad assumption is still cheap.

The tools involved are Claude Code, GSD, Superpowers, and UI/UX Pro Max. They do different jobs at different moments, and the client touches the process at the points where changing course costs the least.

Phase notes first

Everything starts with intake notes from my conversations with the client. Those go into Claude Code first, and GSD breaks them into phases: what gets built first, what depends on what, and where the client has to sign off before we move to the next piece.

That last part is what makes the notes useful to the client and not only to me. They’re reading a plan they can react to, in plain terms, and they can say “that’s not how it works” while it’s still a sentence on a page.

Superpowers keeps each phase honest after that. It requires a checkpoint and a working commit before the next phase starts, which stops me from letting six phases pile up before anyone looks at what got built. The risk with fast tools is that they can produce a lot of work in a short time, and a lot of work built on one wrong assumption is a lot of work to undo.

A checkpoint forces a pause where I look at something real. If it’s off, I’ve lost a phase, not a project.

The mockup comes before the page

UI/UX Pro Max turns the phase plan into the first mockup, and the client and I look at that screen together before a single page goes live. Not after launch, when changing it means redoing real work.

People react differently to a picture than to a description. A client can read “a prominent phone number and four service pages” and nod, then see the mockup and realize the number is in the wrong corner. That correction costs a few minutes at that point, where on a live site it costs a rebuild.

The plan is where a bad assumption is still cheap.

Why the plan gets my attention

The order is deliberate. Notes, then a mockup, then a checkpoint review, and only then does code get written. The client has said yes to the same thing three different ways before anything is built, and I’ve had three chances to hear that I misunderstood.

It also changes how I spend my own hours. A phase plan takes real thought, and writing it feels slower than starting to build. But the time I put in there comes back many times over once the build begins, and the client is surprised by much less at the end.