I like to spend a lot of time in "Ask" mode in Cursor. I guess the equivalent in Claude code is "plan" mode.

Where I have minimal knowledge about the framework or language, I ask a lot of questions about how the implementation would work, what the tradeoffs are etc. This is to minimize any misunderstanding between me and the tool. Then I ask it to write the implementation plan, and execute it one by one.

Cursor lets you have multiple tabs open so I'll have a Ask mode and Agent mode running in parallel.

This is a lot slower, and if it was a language/framework I'm familiar with I'm more likely to execute the plan myself.