Upfront: A Claude Code Plugin That Forces Thinking Before Coding

Upfront is a Claude Code plugin designed to counteract the tendency to generate code without sufficient understanding. The creator noticed that while AI made coding faster, it led to shipping code without fully comprehending what was being built.

Research Context

The plugin was inspired by three studies cited in the source:

• Anthropic's trial: developers who delegated code generation scored 40% lower on comprehension
• METR: experienced developers were 19% slower with AI on their own repos
• Faros AI: 98% more PRs after AI adoption, zero improvement in net throughput

Core Commands

The plugin operates through three main commands:

• /upfront:feature - The AI challenges rather than suggests, asking questions like "What problem goes away if this ships?" before providing technical solutions. It pushes back on vague answers and won't proceed until thinking is substantive.
• /upfront:plan - Breaks work into phases of approximately 400 lines of code, which the source identifies as the empirical limit for meaningful code review.
• /upfront:build - Executes each phase with test-driven development and review per phase.

Additional Features

The plugin includes 20 skills total and has a config protection hook. If the AI attempts to weaken linter rules instead of fixing code, it gets blocked with the message "Fix the code, not the config."

Installation

Install via Claude plugin marketplace:

claude plugin marketplace add ThinkUpfront/Upfront
claude plugin install upfront

After installation, type /upfront:feature to begin using the system.

Resources

• Full Manifesto: https://thinkupfront.dev/why/
• Repository: https://github.com/ThinkUpfront/Upfront
• Website: https://thinkupfront.dev