ia-planning

Software implementation planning with file-based persistence (.plan/). Use when planning code changes touching 3+ files or with ambiguous scope. Skip for typos, single-file fixes, and research/scanning/audit work that produces reports rather than code.

Planning

Core Principle

text

Context window = RAM (volatile, limited)
Filesystem     = Disk (persistent, unlimited)
→ Anything important gets written to disk.

Planning tokens are cheaper than implementation tokens. Front-load thinking; scale effort to complexity.

Procedure

1. Run the Goal Quality Gate on the stated goal.
2. Pick the path per When to Plan: full plan, flat list, or skip.
3. For a full plan, scaffold .plan/ via init-plan.sh.
4. Write the plan per the Plan Template, applying the quality, sizing, and task rules.
5. Run the Verify checklist against the finished plan.
6. Offer the Execution Handoff choice.

Goal Quality Gate

Run this gate before When to Plan below — a weak goal wastes tokens on any path and produces an unverifiable result. Answer these five questions first:

1. What concrete thing will be true when this is done? (named artifact, system state, or user-visible behavior — not "improve X" or "investigate Y")
2. What evidence will prove it? (specific test, command, screenshot, metric — not "looks right")
3. What quantitative or binary threshold defines success? (p95 < 250ms; npm run test:checkout passes; gh pr view 123 shows no unresolved threads)
4. What scope boundaries matter? (which files/modules/environments are in scope; which are explicitly not)
5. What should cause the agent to stop and ask? (which decisions belong to the user, not Claude)

Reject pure-activity goals ("make progress", "keep investigating", "improve things") -- repair them into a verifiable outcome or ask one concise clarification before planning. Skip this gate only when the request already names a specific artifact AND a clear success signal in the user's own words -- the same choice-free cases listed under When to Plan below. Anything vaguer than that runs the gate.

When to Plan

Bias toward producing a plan. A thin plan for small work is mild ceremony; skipping a plan when one was warranted costs real time (reinvented decisions, lost unit boundaries, no IDed requirements to verify against). When unsure, write the plan.

• Full plan (.plan/ directory): multi-file changes, new features, refactors, >5 tool calls
• Flat list (inline checklist): 3-5 file changes, clear scope, no research -- a numbered task list in the conversation or a single progress.md, no .plan/ scaffolding

Skip planning only when ALL of these hold: the work is atomic (one commit, no unit boundaries worth breaking out); there are no KTDs (Key Technical Decisions: choices between approaches; each KTD becomes a Key Decisions entry in the plan -- if one exists, plan); the scope is self-evident from the request, with no boundaries worth pinning in writing; and no upstream artifact (brainstorm, incident report, deferred follow-up) needs traceability through this plan.

Stress test the "looks atomic" case. Many requests look atomic but hide design decisions. "Add caching to this endpoint" sounds atomic, but TTL, invalidation, cache-key shape, and backend selection are all KTDs -- write the plan. The same trap hides in "migrate package A to B" and "add rate limiting". Genuine skips are choice-free: "fix typo in README line 47", "rename oldFn to newFn across the repo", "bump lodash to 4.17.21" (unless breaking changes warrant a unit-by-unit migration).

When skipping the plan doc, work proceeds directly to execution (/ia-work in Claude Code) or to implementation, and any decisions made along the way land in the commit message or docs/solutions/ if worth carrying forward.

Planning Files

Scaffold the .plan/ directory with pre-populated templates using init-plan.sh:

bash

SKILL_DIR="<absolute path of the directory containing this SKILL.md>"
bash "$SKILL_DIR/scripts/init-plan.sh" "Feature Name"

Substitute the real absolute path before running; never execute the command with the angle-bracket placeholder. Anchor the call to SKILL_DIR rather than a bare init-plan.sh — a relative path resolves against the caller's working directory, not the skill, and breaks from a subdirectory or under a non-Claude harness.

This creates .plan/ with the three pre-populated files below and adds .plan/ to .gitignore.

.plan/ files are ephemeral working state -- do not commit them; old files are overwritten when starting a new feature. Within a multi-phase feature, use numbered intermediate files (01-setup.md, 02-phase1-complete.md) to preserve state across phases. docs/plans/ is the separate, committed home for a formal plan document; .plan/ supports the work session.

File	Purpose	Update When
.plan/task_plan.md	Phases, tasks, decisions, errors	After each phase
.plan/findings.md	Research, discoveries, code analysis	After any discovery
.plan/progress.md	Session log, test results, files changed	Throughout session

Test Discovery (Existing Projects)

For existing code, discover the test landscape before planning: find related test/spec files (Glob("**/*test*"), Grep), read the canonical test command from config (package.json scripts, pytest.ini, phpunit.xml, CI), and note coverage gaps -- the plan should extend existing test patterns, not introduce new frameworks. Skip for greenfield projects with no tests yet.

Reference Implementations

When target behavior is hard to describe but an existing implementation embodies it, cite that source as the spec and plan to reimplement its semantics -- source code is higher-fidelity than prose, docs, or screenshots. Record a ref: pointer in the plan so the implementer reads the source, not a summary. Full guidance in execution-and-methodology.md.

Plan Template

markdown

# Plan: [Feature/Task Name]

## Approach
[1-3 sentences: what and why]

## Scope
- **In**: [what's included]
- **Out**: [what's explicitly excluded]

## Global Constraints
[Binds every phase: version floors; naming/format rules; platform limits; security/compatibility invariants. Exact spec values verbatim, never paraphrased. Every task inherits these. Omit if none.]

## Key Decisions (review first)
[Decisions likeliest to change on review: data model shapes; new type/interface contracts; user-facing or UX flows. Per decision: choice, discarded alternative, one-line why. Listed first so review redirects design before mechanical work is planned around it; mechanical refactoring stays in the phases. Omit if no non-obvious choice was made.]

## File Structure
[ALL files created or modified, one-line responsibility each; locks decomposition before tasks are defined. Write for a zero-context engineer.]

| File | Action | Responsibility |
|------|--------|---------------|
| `path/to/file.ts` | Create | [what this file does] |
| `path/to/existing.ts` | Modify | [what changes and why] |

## Next Step
[one line: the phase and task to resume on]

## Phase 1: [Name]
**Status**: pending | in_progress | complete
**Files**: [specific files, max 5-8 per phase]
**Posture**: [test-first | characterization-first | external-delegate]
**Tasks**:
- [ ] [Verb-first atomic task] -- `path/to/file.ts`
- [ ] [Next task]
**Verify**: [specific test: "POST /api/users → 201", not "test feature"]
**Exit**: [clear done definition]

## Phase 2: [Name]
...

## Deferred to Implementation
- [Things intentionally left unspecified -- details that depend on what you find in the code]

## Open Questions
- [Max 3, only truly blocking unknowns]

Plan Quality Rules

Keep phase state current. Changing a phase's Status also refreshes ## Next Step. That one line is what the resume protocol reads after a compaction or a new session, so a stale Next Step is worse than none -- it resumes work that already happened.

No placeholders in tasks. Every task must contain actual code patterns, commands, or file paths. Forbid: "TBD", "TODO", "handle errors appropriately", "add validation", "implement as needed", "similar to above", "Similar to Task N", "See above." Tasks may be read out of order -- repeat the spec, code pattern, or file path in every task that needs it. A step that cannot be specified concretely needs further breakdown before it belongs in a plan.

Type-consistency check. After writing all tasks, scan for naming drift. If Task 3 says clearLayers() but Task 7 says clearFullLayers(), that's a bug in the plan. Function names, variable names, and file paths must be consistent across all tasks.

No gold-plating. Build exactly what the spec requires -- no features or "nice-to-haves" beyond it. Quote the exact spec requirements in the plan and flag any additions explicitly as scope expansion needing approval. Basic first implementations are acceptable -- most need 2-3 revision cycles anyway.

Front-load high-variance decisions. Order the plan document by how likely each part is to change on review, not by execution order -- the template's Key Decisions bracket defines what goes there; execution order still governs the phases themselves.

Phase Sizing Rules

Every phase must be context-safe:

• Max 5-8 files touched
• Max 2 dependencies on other phases
• No single task exceeds ~2 hours of focused work -- if it would, split further
• Fits in one focused session for a developer without external blockers
• If a phase violates these → split it
• Scope challenge: if the overall plan touches 8+ files or introduces 2+ new classes/services, challenge the scope. Ask: can this be split into smaller, independently shippable increments?

Task Decomposition

Decompose by user-visible capability (vertical slices), not by technical layer, so each phase is independently demonstrable. Checkpoint every 2-3 tasks to catch integration drift early. Full guidance -- vertical slicing and the checkpoint system -- in execution-and-methodology.md.

Decision Authority

Not every decision needs user input:

Claude decides (technical implementation): language, framework, architecture, libraries, file structure, naming conventions, test strategy, error handling approach, database schema details, API design patterns. Make the call, document the rationale in the plan.

User decides (experience-affecting): scope tradeoffs ("cut X to hit deadline?"), UX choices that change what users see or do, data model decisions that constrain future product options, anything where two valid paths lead to meaningfully different user outcomes.

Heuristic: If the decision changes what the user experiences, ask. If it changes how the code works, decide.

Clarifying Questions

Ask via AskUserQuestion (Claude Code; load with ToolSearch select:AskUserQuestion if not loaded) or request_user_input (Codex); fall back to numbered options in chat.

Scale to complexity:

• Small task: 0-1 questions, assume reasonable defaults
• Medium feature: 1-2 questions on critical unknowns
• Large project: 3-5 questions (auth, data model, integrations, scope)

Only ask about decisions that fall in the "user decides" category above. Make reasonable assumptions for everything else.

Task Rules

Write every task as if the implementer has zero context and questionable taste -- they cannot infer intent from conversation history, so everything must be in the plan.

• Atomic: one action, 2-5 minutes to complete. "Write the failing test" is a step. "Implement the feature" is not.
• Verb-first: "Add...", "Create...", "Refactor...", "Verify..."
• Concrete: name specific files, endpoints, components. Include exact commands with expected output, code snippets, and file paths with line ranges for modifications.
• Ordered: respect dependencies, sequential when needed
• Verifiable: include at least one validation task per phase
• Complete: do not defer test coverage, skip edge cases, or omit error handling to save time. The marginal cost of completeness during initial implementation is near-zero compared to retrofitting later.

Operational Patterns

Context management rules, error protocol (3-attempt escalation), iterative plan refinement, the 5-question context check, and session-continuity/traceability conventions (numbered outputs, resume protocol, SHA and deviation notes) are in operational-patterns.md. Read when starting a multi-phase plan or resuming after a gap.

Execution Posture Signals

Phases can carry optional metadata that shapes how /ia-work sequences implementation. Default is tests-after; opt in per phase via the header (## Phase 2: Auth middleware [test-first]): test-first (write failing test before implementation), characterization-first (capture existing behavior before changing it), external-delegate (mark units suitable for parallel/external execution). When to use each is in execution-and-methodology.md.

Plan Deepening

When asked to "deepen" or "strengthen" an existing plan, load plan-deepening.md — targeted research workflow (additive, not restructuring), per-section enhancement format, and Enhancement Summary block at the plan head. Orchestrated by the /ia-deepen-plan command.

Execution Handoff

When a plan is complete, offer the user an explicit choice -- subagent-driven (dispatch each phase to a focused agent) or inline execution -- rather than drifting into implementation. State a one-sentence recommendation, then present the choice via the same ask mechanism as Clarifying Questions and wait for the user to pick; do not auto-start either path. Dispatch discipline and portable task-prompt anchoring are in execution-and-methodology.md.

Verify

• Plan file exists at .plan/task_plan.md (or docs/plans/ for formal plans)
• All tasks are verb-first and atomic (2-5 minutes each)
• File structure table is complete with action and responsibility columns
• Phase sizing respects 5-8 file limit
• No placeholder tasks ("implement feature", "add tests") -- every task names specific files and patterns
• Each phase delivers end-to-end functionality (not a single horizontal layer)
• Open questions limited to 3 or fewer genuinely blocking unknowns

Integration

• Predecessor: ia-brainstorming when requirements are ambiguous -- use an existing brainstorm spec (docs/brainstorms/) as input and skip idea refinement.
• Architecture decisions: record significant trade-offs (chosen approach, what was given up) as an ADR (/ia-adr in Claude Code); ADRs outlive the plan.
• Threat modeling: dispatch ia-security-sentinel in threat-model mode before implementation when the plan adds auth flows, payment handling, external API surfaces, or new trust boundaries -- architectural gaps are cheaper to fix in the plan than the code.
• Prose quality: ia-writing to humanize plan language and strip AI slop.
• Execution handoff: after approval, per Execution Handoff above.