Opus 5 in plan mode: four planning rounds to land a one-file fix the user specified up front
What happened
Opus 5 in Claude Code (desktop app, plan mode). I reported two small frontend bugs in my Next.js site and asked for proposals. The model spent four plan iterations failing to implement what I said in my very first message.
My original request (translated): "Leaving a request from a news article leads nowhere — quick fix: a popup with the lead form from the homepage."
What the model did:
- Proposed a popup — fine, that's what I asked.
- I asked whether there was another option: show the form on the page. It replanned around rendering the lead form at the bottom of every news article.
- I said the form in news articles makes no sense — just link to the homepage. It replanned again.
- Only on the fourth attempt did it land on "remove the button from the news section, fix the stale link". That was derivable from my messages two rounds earlier.
The actual problem
The model kept proposing bigger solutions than the request warranted and kept re-asking for approval instead of narrowing on what I'd already told it. Each round burned a full plan write + ExitPlanMode cycle. When I gave short, blunt corrections, it restated my correction back to me instead of just doing it.
Also: it used AskUserQuestion to ask me design questions it could and should have decided itself, then, when I pushed back, kept asking.
Environment
- Claude Code desktop app (Code tab), plan mode
- Model: Opus 5
- Plugins active: ponytail (laziness/minimal-solution skill), impeccable (design skill)
Expected
Converge on the minimal solution from the first correction. When the user says "just link to the homepage", that is the spec — not an input to another planning round.