I have not done a systematic ablation study, so not all things might be necessary, but anyway, here's what's working for me very well (in no particular order):
0. Use Opus 5.5 on high.
1. Have in your CLAUDE.md the rule that code changes go together with updates to the docs. For me, that's HTML files in docs/. (Could be .md as well, but for human consumption, HTML is nicer.)
2. Have the rule that only that should go into the docs that an experienced engineer would need to rebuild the system from scratch, ignoring how it would look.
3. Larger work gets a plan doc in docs/plan, i.e. multi-PR work. There is a template how plans look, and an important part of the template is that the last step of the plan is always to delete the plan and fold anything from it that makes sense as long-term documentation into the docs.
4. Have a rule that before creating a PR, a sub agent needs to review the code, and have Codex Sol 6.1 high review it as well. Then let the main agent iterate on their findings until they are happy.
5. Every now and then, ask for an audit of the code. I ask for DRY, YAGNI, and KISS. Let it produce a report. Then let it fix all findings. If a lot, use a plan.
6. If you're adding something straight forward, just ask for it directly. If it's not, ask for a brief first. Review it. Then decide whether to implement in one go or through a plan.
7. Get an ultra plan, so you (mostly) don't have to worry about token usage but can use agents to their full ability.
8. Bonus and plug: Ask your agent to hand over with a demo video. It often finds and fixes issues while recording it, and you're not degraded to the agent's QA team, but it has to put in the work to convince you. I built a UI for directing agents as described: obeya.si. Free, open-source, local.