I disagree that you can reach what I would call a flow state with such a degree of non-participation but I entirely agree that planning first makes execution better, for both humans and agents.
I can't reach flow with agent coding because as soon as I set it running I flip over to something else and come back later.
I think this is a problem with the current agents, though. If it responded immediately with its ideas and code then I wouldn't flip away and could stay present.
A flow state is possible with 100% focus at any level of abstraction.
If you just "flip over" to HN while the agent thinks, then you're not 100% focused.
But if you're managing three agents at the same time on the same codebase, and while Agent 2 is thinking you "flip over" to Agent 3, you're still fully participating, just at a higher level of abstraction.
Right, same deal as if you were running multiple requests over the network, you need to parallelize them instead of idling while you wait for the network to complete.
I would like to believe this, but in practice, the context switch involves purging my mental working state, which drags me out of the flow state. I'm not sure how to solve this, but I imagine that the context I switch to should be as close as possible to the one I started with - the problem then is that the agents might trample over each other.
It's a matter of definition, a flow state is hitting peak performance without attending to the details of your actions, fluidly and without delays, at a task that in any normal situation would be considered complex and difficult.
If you know the feeling from performance or from trance-like coding sessions, there's no mapping of that to the use of agents as described in this article. It's not that I don't achieve it, it's that using agents doesn't have the depth of technique or immediacy of reaction needed to be worthy of anyone reaching a proper flow state with it.
I feel like we've already corrupted the meaning of vibe now, do we have to corrupt the meaning of flow state too?
I think it’s just different than flow state you experience with traditional coding. I agree that if you’re just entering a single prompt at a time and waiting for it to finish, there’s no way you can enter flow state. However, if you are orchestrating multiple agents and using spare mental bandwidth to debug and plan next steps, then you have the ingredients for flow state. It’s a continual flow of strategizing, evaluating, going in deep to manually handle a hard issue, and then returning to high-level thinking.
I’m 16 years into my career, build some fairly complex production systems, and definitely enjoyed flow state in normal coding. I’m still figuring out a rhythm with Claude Code, but flow state is certainly achievable.
I think this is a problem with the current agents, though. If it responded immediately with its ideas and code then I wouldn't flip away and could stay present.