Plan

When to use

• User enters plan mode or asks to plan before implementing
• User asks to create a workspace, design doc, ADR, or task breakdown
• User asks to resume, review, or amend an existing design or workspace
• User asks to integrate workspace artifacts into durable storage

Overview

Planning must always take less time than implementation. The effort scales with complexity, never the other way around. This file holds the triage: assess the complexity, then load exactly one route file. Never load both.

Complexity triage

Assess the work against three triggers, in order:

1. Resuming? Root CLAUDE.md has an ## Active workspaces entry → load complex-plan.md and follow its Phase 0.
2. Multi-session scope? More than one session of work, more than ~5 tasks, or a domain model worth tracing → full workspace: load complex-plan.md.
3. Hard-to-reverse decision? Persistence, protocol, public contract → that decision gets an ADR whatever the route; the route still follows trigger 2. On the small route an additive flag, a CLI option, or an output shape is a decision bullet, not an ADR. The small route writes an ADR only for persistence or a wire protocol, the small route's shortcut. Both pass the admission test in complex-plan.md.

None of the above → small plan: load small-plan.md and produce one document. Heavy scaffolding on a small task reads as noise to the human and costs tokens without adding decisions.

The complex route reads autopilot.md at Phase 5 and drafts from templates/.

Rules for both routes

Delegated and one-shot contexts: decide, do not ask. When the requester has delegated ("your call", "decide and continue") or cannot answer (headless run, batch job), make the decision, record it with its reason, and continue. Ask only when blocked by a genuine externality the codebase and brief cannot resolve (a credential, an unstated business rule). Ratification questions in a delegated context burn turns without adding information.

A task is a behaviour, not a layer. Every task is one slice: one behaviour across every layer it touches (Hunt and Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmer, "Tracer Bullets"). The first task is the walking skeleton: the thinnest path through the public surface, end to end. Every later task widens it by one behaviour. Build layer by layer only when nothing can run before the whole exists. Four cases: a protocol wrong until complete, a cutover with no dual path, no partial delivery, a hardware bring-up. Then the task says Slice: whole — <reason> and a reviewer may contest the reason. The Slice values and their sequence live in complex-plan.md.

The machine layer never disappears, it shrinks. Every plan ends with resumable state on disk: the full TASKS.md checklist on the complex route, the minimal task section on the small route. A plan an agent cannot resume from is a chat message, not a plan.

Driving an implementation: the tdd red run is a gate, not a suggestion — implementation starts after the failing run is captured, and the final report quotes it.

One task at a time, closed by its commit. Take the first unchecked task. Write its test, capture the red run, make it green, tick its box, commit it. Only then open the next task. Never write every test first, never tick boxes in a batch at the end. The commit is part of the task, in every context: a headless or delegated run commits without asking, and the final report lists one commit per task. Message and staging rules live in git-conventions. Each task's implementation covers its own test only (tdd rule 5), so the next task goes red. When a test still passes on its first run, the previous slice overshot: fold that test into the previous task's commit, tick the task, and name the overshoot in the report. Never commit a tests-only slice.

Boundaries

Claude Code's built-in plan mode covers interactive approval of an immediate change; once a plan should persist to disk, this skill owns it at either scale. Implementation methodology belongs to software-engineer and tdd; commits to git-conventions. Commands follow the shell rules in software-engineer.