Capability-Aware Planning

Use this Skill when

The First Mate is writing or updating IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md for a non-trivial objective and needs machine-assisted:

• required capability inference
• Skill discovery and ranking
• task graph decomposition
• agent manifest proposals

Load this Skill together with implementation-planning during /plan-feature.

Inputs

• User objective / request text
• Repository root
• Optional context: stacks, PROJECT_CONTEXT.md excerpt, discovery summary
• Plan ID (defaults to draft until issue assigned)

Procedure

1. Ensure registry is current: ./scripts/compile-capability-registry.sh

2. Run the planning pipeline:

   ./scripts/capability-plan.sh --plan-id <plan-id> "<objective>"

3. Copy rendered sections into IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md:
   • Required Capabilities
   • Reusable Capabilities Found
   • Technology Intelligence Candidates
   • Task Graph
   • Proposed Agent Configuration
   • Evaluation Strategy
   • Learning Plan
   • Approval Boundary
4. Complete human-authored sections (Problem Statement, Acceptance Criteria, risks, etc.) using implementation-planning.
5. If Capability Gaps are present, surface them explicitly — do not silently improvise.
6. Set plan status to AWAITING APPROVAL and stop.

Machine artifacts

Written under .agent/plans/<plan-id>/:

• resolve.json
• task-graph.json
• manifests.json

M40: typed dependency links + subagent pwd

task-graph.json dependencies carry explicit link types (backward compatible):

• string form (legacy) — pure ordering edge
• hard link — { "target", "link": "hard", "contract" }: version-locked contract coupling; both sides must change together (e.g. implementation tasks hard-link the architecture-brief contract)
• symlink — { "target", "link": "symlink", "paths" }: loose module / artifact path reference (e.g. validation symlinks implementation artifacts)

Manifests include a working_context block (the subagent pwd): context_root (scoped route in .agent/context/), inode_refs (only the in-scope module's inode pointers), and scope_allow / scope_deny path lists. Disjoint module tasks must not share inode refs — that isolation invariant is checked by the M40 eval sensor. Build the inode store first (Skill context-inodes) or manifests degrade to unrestricted scope with a note.

Output

Capability-aware plan sections ready for Captain review.

Prohibited actions

• Do not treat Technology Intelligence candidates as approved Skills
• Do not begin product implementation
• Do not omit capability gap sections when gaps exist