Flow — plan & plan review

Phase 3: write the plan (inline, user watching)

Lite mode only — triage unknowns first. Lite skips research, so this is the only place they get caught. Sort them as flow-research step 4 does and ask the shape-changing ones in ONE AskUserQuestion round before writing anything; log the answers to the decision log. Needing a second round means lite was the wrong mode — say so.

Write plan.md in the task folder from the plugin's templates/plan.md:

• Intent + falsifiable acceptance criteria (each checkable by a command, test, or observation).
• Approach chosen, alternatives noted in one line each.
• Assumptions & open questions — every unknown resolved without asking, marked [answered] / [assumed] / [open — owner]. An empty section claims the plan made zero judgment calls; that is rare, not the default.
• Tasks: file-level — every task names the files it touches and its verification step. Guardrail: if the Tasks section is longer than the diff you expect it to produce, cut it down before proceeding.
• Out of scope + Verification (machine commands AND how to drive the app/feature end-to-end).

Then set phase: plan-review, update Next action.

Phase 4: gated review

1. Critic pass (once). Dispatch flow-plan-critic with the plan.md, research.md, and repo paths. Revise plan.md for Blocking findings; use judgment on Advisory ones. ONE critic pass — do not re-dispatch after revising.
2. User gate. Present: plan.md by path, a ≤5-line summary of the approach, one line tallying the Assumptions section ("3 assumptions — 1 you answered, 1 repo default, 1 left open"), and the critic's verdict summary. Ask approve / revise (AskUserQuestion). The tally is disclosure, not a fresh question round — the asking already happened upstream; this only makes sure approval is informed. Revisions loop back to the user, not to the critic.
3. On approval (never before): append to the decision log - YYYY-MM-DD gate 1: plan approved by user, set phase: implementation, update updated + Next action, announce, and invoke the flow-implement skill.

The validator blocks phase: implementation without the gate-1 line and without a filled Assumptions section in plan.md, and blocks all code edits until then. A plan that genuinely made no judgment calls writes - none — <reason>; an empty section is not a way out. If blocked, you skipped a step — fix the process, never the guardrail.