Verification-Driven Development: The Standard Agentic Pattern

Multiple practitioner guides this month converge on "verification-driven development" as the core pattern for 2-3x better output from coding agents. Three pillars: (1) always give agents a way to verify their own output (tests, builds, linting, browser automation), (2) force an explicit design step before any file is touched (plan-first), and (3) actively manage the context window (compact or restart when approaching limits). Anthropic's own engineering team uses CLAUDE.md for project memory, plan-first for non-trivial tasks, and verification loops as mandatory workflow gates. Action: Add build, test, and lint commands to your CLAUDE.md. Use /plan for anything beyond trivial changes. (Cuttlesoft, DevGenius)