When you're working on a more complex project - something where each step might take more than two human hours - you need to give Claude more thinking power. There are several strategies you can use, listed here in increasing order of complexity.

The simplest is to turn thinking mode on or off with the Tab key. Thinking mode gives Claude more time to reason before responding.

For more complex problems, you can go into planning mode first by pressing Shift+Tab twice. This lets you discuss the approach with Claude before any code is written.

And for the most complex scenarios, you can create a subagent - essentially spawning another instance of Claude to work on a specific subtask while you continue with the main work.

The key is matching your approach to the complexity of the problem. Simple tasks don't need all this machinery, but when you're tackling something truly complex, these tools give Claude the cognitive resources it needs to do the job well.