Coding agents often produce better results when you don’t ask them to write code immediately. If you jump straight to execution without thinking through the design, the code quality suffers. I’ve found it better to whiteboard the problem first. It’s like pairing with a senior engineer. You enter a room, map out the problem space, explore solutions, and sketch architectural diagrams. Instead of a whiteboard, it’s Markdown. And instead of losing the work when you erase it, the session persists as a design document.