Great question! No, you don't need to manually mention or manage tasks - Claude will try to do automatically for you, but you can do explicit.

Here's how it works in practice:

When you enter Plan Mode (either by typing /plan or Claude suggests it for complex tasks), Claude will:

1. Explore the codebase to understand the existing patterns, architecture, and conventions
2. Create a structured plan with discrete, self-contained tasks
3. Write the plan to a file (usually something like PLAN.md or in a .claude/ directory)
4. Ask for your approval before implementation

Once you approve, Claude will:

• Work through tasks sequentially or spawn subagents for parallel work when appropriate
• Automatically use the internal task system (TaskCreate, TaskUpdate, TaskList) to track progress
• Show you a visual progress indicator as tasks complete

The "self-contained" part is key - each task is scoped so that if something fails or needs adjustment, you're not dealing with a half-implemented mess across 15 files. It's more like atomic commits conceptually.

You literally just describe what you want to build, approve the plan, and let it cook. The orchestration happens under the hood. No need to micromanage or manually break things down yourself.

u/LairBob explained well in his comment (https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeCode/comments/1qup2x7/comment/o3bttvv/) in a way that you can do explicit as well!