This approach has been working pretty well for me. YMMV. 4.8 manages and calls agents to do the work. The idea. The manager plans, decomposes, dispatches, and reviews. It does not do the expensive work itself. The roster. | Role | Model | Job | |------|-------|-----| | Manager (main loop) | Opus 4.8 | Plan, decompose, dispatch, review, run irreversible gates. | | sage | Fable 5 | Hard reasoning: adversarial review, design adjudication, root-cause. Self-contained brief only. | | coder | Opus 5 | Novel or design-adjacent code. Any spec that says “figure out”. | | builder | Sonnet | Routine code that follows a pattern the spec cites. | | grunt | Haiku | Mechanical, zero-judgment work: renames, sweeps, builds, log triage. | | Explore | Read-only | Reconnaissance when you need the conclusion, not the files. | Inline-vs-dispatch gate. Type an edit inline only when all three hold: the manager holds the full file context, the change is fully specified, and runtime verification is the real gate. Otherwise dispatch. When in doubt, dispatch. (§4) builder-vs-coder. Spec cites a pattern file → builder. Spec says “figure out” → coder. Plans specify, they do not implement. A plan states what, where, why, the interface contract, and how to verify. No finished code bodies. Multi-step work. Brainstorm the design doc → decompose into numbered phase docs → execute each phase in a clean session. Each phase carries a Contract and a Verification. Cost discipline. Protect the manager’s context; return short verdicts, not long reports. Split the session by judgment density. Scale the reviewer to the diff’s risk. Evidence, not claims. Show the command and its output. Verify before you claim done. submitted by /u/mugsy33
Originally posted by u/mugsy33 on r/ClaudeCode