The articles approach matches mine, but I've learned from exactly the things you're pointing out.

I get the PLAN.md (or equivalent) to be separated into "phases" or stages, then carefully prompt (because Claude and Codex both love to "keep going") it to only implement that stage, and update the PLAN.md

Tests are crucial too, and form another part of the plan really. Though my current workflow begins to build them later in the process than I would prefer...