The mode is getting lost because the task you gave it, is way up the context chain from what it is currently working on. It loses track of its task and starts working on other things that it notices.

The way to get around this is to never have the model just “do the thing”. Have it create a plan and create a todo list from the plan (it will do this on its own typically in Claude Code), the. You “approve” the plan, then start working against that todo list and plan.

This ensures that the “task” is never very large (it is always just the next thing on the todo list, which has already been scoped to be small) and there is never any ambiguity over what to do next.

So for your prompt I would ask it to find all locations that use the old job api and put them in a planning document. For each location, have it note if it anticipates any difficulty transitioning to the new api in the planning document. If you want to get fancy, have it use the Task tool to have a subset do the analysis, this keeps the context of the main model less cluttered. I usually use planning mode for this in Claude Code. Then look at the plan, approve it (or tweak it) and have it execute that plan.

I agree with this, break it down further.

When instructing it to execute the plan, i would even have it only execute step 1, then you review. then step 2, review and so on. this prevents it from going down a rabbit hole and you can adjust the plan's steps or change course more easily.