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Buyer guide

Cline Workflow Playbook: Plan, Act, and Verify

Run a Cline task from request to merge with committed rules, Plan mode first, a model per mode, small changes, and normal code review.

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3 min read
Sources
15 cited
In this piece
Cline+39 Positive

The call

Plan before Cline edits and review what it writes like a colleague's pull request.

Cline stays consistent across a team only when the rules live in the repository and each task is small.

Commit one set of project rules, start every task beyond a typo in Plan mode, and keep each change small enough to read in one sitting. The steps follow Cline's Plan and Act documentation and the habits engineers report after months of daily use.

When you need this

  • Engineers have installed Cline and results vary from one person to the next.
  • Sessions run long, and Cline starts redoing work it has already finished.
  • Reviewers receive large agent-written diffs with no plan attached.
  • You are moving a pilot group from trying Cline to using it on production code.

Evaluation criteria

  1. Write the project rules down

    Does every engineer's Cline read the same conventions?

    Look forWorkspace rules in .clinerules/ or .cline/rules/, committed to the repository, one concern per file. The VS Code extension, Cline Desktop, and the CLI all read both folders. Cline also reads AGENTS.md, .cursorrules, and .windsurfrules, so a repository set up for another agent keeps working. One team rolling Cline out keeps an architecture README and points Cline to it on every task.

  2. Plan before Cline edits

    Does Cline understand the change before it touches a file?

    Look forPlan mode for anything beyond a typo. In Plan mode Cline reads and discusses the code but cannot change files. For changes that span several files or sessions, run /deep-planning and have Cline write the plan to a markdown file a reviewer can read. One engineer spends about four times as long planning as acting.

  3. Pair models by mode

    Does the stronger model do the reasoning and the cheaper one the typing?

    Look forSeparate Plan and Act models. Cline switches between them when the mode changes. Cline's own examples pair Claude Opus for planning with Claude Sonnet for acting, or GLM with Grok Code Fast to cut cost.

  4. Keep each change reviewable

    Can a reviewer read what Cline changed in one sitting?

    Look forSmall, scoped tasks, each with a test or check that proves the result. Engineers report the best results on small changes and drift on large refactors. Start a new task when the context fills up, because long sessions past that point redo finished work.

  5. Let Cline verify its own work

    Does Cline run the tests and linters before it says it is done?

    Look forAct mode running the test suite and reading editor diagnostics until they pass, with checkpoints on so a bad step can be restored. Compare at each checkpoint shows exactly what a step changed.

  6. Review it like any pull request

    Does an agent-written change meet the same bar as a colleague's?

    Look forNormal code review before merge. A Thoughtworks Distinguished Engineer reports steering constantly and often discarding changes. Treat the agent's output as a draft until a reviewer accepts it.

Questions to ask vendors

  1. When will organization rules pushed from the admin console reach Cline Desktop? Cline's enforcement table applies them in the IDE extensions and the CLI only.
  2. Is Plan mode read-only in the release we deploy? GitHub issue #13140, which reports Plan mode ignoring edit permissions after the 4.x SDK migration, was still open on Oct 25, 2026.
  3. Which of our models get Auto Compact summaries? Cline's docs say other models fall back to rule-based truncation of old messages. The CLI's --compaction flag sets agentic or basic compaction, or turns it off.
  4. Which models does Cline test its tool prompts against, and which do you see fail most often?

Red flags

  • Tasks start in Act mode by default, with no plan a reviewer can read.
  • One long session is reused across unrelated work until the context compacts.
  • Rules live only in individual engineers' global settings.
  • Agent-written pull requests skip the review a human change would get.

Products in this piece

Sources

Official documentation
8
Public source
7
  1. Cline docs: Plan & Act modeOfficial documentationdocs.cline.bot
  2. Cline docs: RulesOfficial documentationdocs.cline.bot
  3. Cline docs: CheckpointsOfficial documentationdocs.cline.bot
  4. Cline docs: Auto Approve & YOLO modeOfficial documentationdocs.cline.bot
  5. Cline docs: CLI overviewOfficial documentationdocs.cline.bot
  6. Hacker News, chrisnolet: spend about four times as long planning as acting in Cline (May 20, 2025)Public sourcenews.ycombinator.com
  7. Hacker News, inheritedwisdom: a team rollout of VS Code, Cline, and Sonnet 3.7 (Mar 31, 2025)Public sourcenews.ycombinator.com
  8. Hacker News, jjmarr: letting Cline iterate until tests and linters pass (Sep 18, 2025)Public sourcenews.ycombinator.com
  9. Hacker News, anigbrowl: starting new tasks once Cline's context clutters (Aug 13, 2026)Public sourcenews.ycombinator.com
  10. GitHub issue #5790: automatic compaction at 160k tokens loses context (Aug 24, 2025)Public sourcegithub.com
  11. GitHub issue #13140: Plan mode not respecting edit permissions after the 4.x SDK migration (Aug 10, 2026)Public sourcegithub.com
  12. Birgitta Böckeler, martinfowler.com: The role of developer skills in agentic coding (Mar 25, 2025)Public sourcemartinfowler.com
  13. Cline docs: Enterprise provider configurationOfficial documentationdocs.cline.bot
  14. Cline docs: Auto CompactOfficial documentationdocs.cline.bot
  15. Cline docs: CLI referenceOfficial documentationdocs.cline.bot

Keep reading

  1. Buyer guideCline Model Access and Spend: What Each Path CostsWhat your own key, Cline credits, and ClinePass each cost, what engineers report spending, and how to see the cost of each task.
  2. Buyer guideCline Enterprise Controls ChecklistSSO, approved model vendors, MCP allowlists, and telemetry for Cline, with the products that enforce each setting.
  3. Buyer guideCline Auto-Approve and Checkpoints PolicyWhich actions Cline takes without asking, when YOLO mode is acceptable, and how checkpoints undo a bad step.
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