Plan mode and /init
Claude Code ships both. Here is the line between them and SlashForge — and when you need neither.
These are the two things people reach for first, and the two objections worth answering before anything else. Neither is a competitor exactly. The honest framing is that SlashForge starts where both of them stop.
Plan mode
Plan mode is a pause before implementation: it drafts an approach, you approve it, and the agent then works freely to the end That first gate is genuinely valuable — and it is the one gate SlashForge shares.
Plan mode gates the plan. SlashForge gates the plan, the branch, the PR, and the cleanup.
The difference is everything after approval.
| Plan mode | SlashForge | |
|---|---|---|
| Gates | One, at the plan | Four — plan, branch strategy, PR target, post-merge cleanup |
| After approval | Stops enforcing | Verification, code review, and PR phases still run |
| Verification | Not required | Phase 6 must pass lint, tests, and build — a failure stops the run before a PR exists |
| Branch and PR | Left to the conversation | Each is an explicit decision you answer |
| Persistence | Ephemeral — the next session starts cold | /slashforge:setup writes CLAUDE.md and .claude/, so the next session starts informed |
| Repeatability | As consistent as that day’s prompt | The phases run identically every time, for everyone on the team |
You can use plan mode inside SlashForge. Phase 2 is exactly where it fits — the ten phases care that a plan was confirmed, not how you drafted it.
/init
Claude Code ships with a built-in /init, and it is good at what it does. The
distinction is narrower than “which tool is better”:
/initwrites a file./slashforge:setupinstalls a workflow.
/init (built-in) | /slashforge:setup | |
|---|---|---|
Writes CLAUDE.md | Yes | Yes |
| Asks clarifying questions | No — discovers and suggests | Yes, in batches, before writing anything |
| Creates | CLAUDE.md only (or + skills/hooks with CLAUDE_CODE_NEW_INIT=1) | Full .claude/ — rules, skills, agents, commands, hooks, plus CLAUDE.md |
| Approach | Opinion-light | Opinionated — enforces multi-agent layout, 200-line cap, global vs specialist split |
| Agents | None | Mandatory developer, code-reviewer, git, plus specialists |
| Monorepos | Single-repo focused | Root plus a CLAUDE.md per app |
| Safe to re-run | Suggests CLAUDE.md improvements | Yes — generated_by markers decide what may be overwritten |
| Installs a workflow | No | Yes — /slashforge:code and its ten phases |
The opinionation is the point. It produces the same structure every time, which is what makes the output reviewable across a team.
When you need neither
A small single-purpose repo. A script. A prototype you will delete next month.
If nobody is going to review the output and nothing ships from it, plan mode
alone is the right amount of process — the gates cost more than they save, and
/init is fast, unopinionated, and already installed.
SlashForge is deliberately heavy. A full /slashforge:code run costs
100–250k tokens and stops to ask you
four questions. If what you want is an agent that turns a prompt into a patch as
fast as possible, this is the wrong tool and it will annoy you.
Using both
They compose. Run /init first for a starter CLAUDE.md, then
/slashforge:setup — its Update flow reads what is already there and fills gaps
rather than overwriting.
Files /slashforge:setup did not generate carry no generated_by marker, so
they are treated as yours: edited to fill gaps, never overwritten. See
/slashforge:setup for how the markers
work.