This is more or less what the "architect" mode is in KiloCode. It does all the planning and documentation, and then has to be switched to "Code" in order to author any of it. It allows me to ensure we're on the same page, more or less, with intentions and scope before giving it access to writing anything.

It consumes ~30-40% of the tokens associated with a project, in my experience, but they seem to be used in a more productive way long-term, as it doesn't need to rehash anything later on if it got covered in planning. That said, I don't pay too close attention to my consumption, as I found that QwenCoder 30B will run on my home desktop PC (48GB RAM/12GB vRAM) in a way that's plenty functional and accomplishes my goals (albeit a little slower than Copilot on most tasks).

Workflow improvement: Use a repo bundler to make a single file and drop your entire codebase in gemini or chatgpt. Their whole codebase comprehension is great and you can chat for a long time without the api cost. You can even get them to comment on each other's feedback, it's great.