--- title: EGM: Google's New Way To Plan With Claude Code Is Insane description: Google built a spec-driven planning workflow called the Elephant Goldfish Model (EGM) for coding agents like Claude Code and Codex. An 'elephant' agent... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/egm-google-s-new-way-to-plan-with-claude-code-is-insane-wnpdgfh5l twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: EGM: Google's New Way To Plan With Claude Code Is Insane | daily.dev og:description: Google built a spec-driven planning workflow called the Elephant Goldfish Model (EGM) for coding agents like Claude Code and Codex. An 'elephant' agent... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/egm-google-s-new-way-to-plan-with-claude-code-is-insane-wnpdgfh5l og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/WnPDgfh5l.png og:image:alt: EGM: Google's New Way To Plan With Claude Code Is Insane og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # EGM: Google's New Way To Plan With Claude Code Is Insane **[AI LABS](https://daily.dev/sources/ailabs-393)** · 15 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Google built a spec-driven planning workflow called the Elephant Goldfish Model (EGM) for coding agents like Claude Code and Codex. An 'elephant' agent remembers the full project context and writes a detailed plan, while context-free 'goldfish' sub-agents review that plan from multiple angles without seeing the original chat, so nothing said earlier can sway them. The review runs five rounds (numbered 5 to 9), producing a plan saved in a docs/designs folder before any code is built. A bootstrap command also writes readme files for every code folder; in one test it generated 28 new readme files. A later 'drift report' command compares the app against those readmes and caught a real bug where sold products could still be deleted instead of just hidden. Google says EGM is overkill for small one-shot fixes. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is Google's elephant goldfish model for planning with Claude Code? It's a spec-driven development workflow where an 'elephant' agent that remembers full project context writes a plan, and context-free 'goldfish' sub-agents review it from multiple angles without seeing the prior chat. It runs five review rounds, produces a plan file in a docs/designs folder, and was developed by Google engineers based on an article by Dave Renson, free on Google's GitHub. _daily.dev surfaces workflows like this for developers comparing agent-planning approaches before adopting one._ ### Why don't AI agent plan modes catch their own mistakes? Because planning happens in the same chat where the agent already discussed the idea with you, so when it reviews its own plan it basically agrees with itself. Google says models tend to stick to their own wrong ideas and agree with what the user wants instead of catching mistakes, which is why the elephant goldfish model keeps review sub-agents blind to that chat history. _Developers debugging unreliable AI-generated plans can track fixes like this via daily.dev._ ### How do I check if my app code has drifted from my documented plan or readme files? Run the EGM drift report command, which starts sub-agents to compare your app against its readme files and produces a report of mismatches. In one test it caught a real bug: shop owners could delete already-sold products even though the documented rule said sold products could only be hidden, not deleted. _daily.dev helps developers keep up with tooling that catches code-to-spec drift before it causes bugs._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Google Antigravity 2.0 beats Claude Code and Codex at their own game](https://daily.dev/posts/google-antigravity-2-0-beats-claude-code-and-codex-at-their-own-game-oe3zjajyf) · XDA Developers · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [Agentic AI Engineering in Practice: How AI Engineers and Forward-Deployed Engineers Build with Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini](https://daily.dev/posts/agentic-ai-engineering-in-practice-how-ai-engineers-and-forward-deployed-engineers-build-with-claud-nj03xq7ka) · freeCodeCamp · 16 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#google](https://daily.dev/tags/google), [#claude-code](https://daily.dev/tags/claude-code), [#prompt-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/prompt-engineering), [#spec-driven-development](https://daily.dev/tags/spec-driven-development) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/egm-google-s-new-way-to-plan-with-claude-code-is-insane-wnpdgfh5l) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"EGM: Google's New Way To Plan With Claude Code Is Insane","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/egm-google-s-new-way-to-plan-with-claude-code-is-insane-wnpdgfh5l","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/egm-google-s-new-way-to-plan-with-claude-code-is-insane-wnpdgfh5l"},"datePublished":"2026-10-25T15:25:38.922Z","dateModified":"2026-10-28T18:58:44.321Z","description":"Google built a spec-driven planning workflow called the Elephant Goldfish Model (EGM) for coding agents like Claude Code and Codex. 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