plugins/development-harness/skills/planning/SKILL.md
Use when Stage 1 Discovery is complete and design must begin — transforms the ARTIFACT:DISCOVERY into an actionable ARTIFACT:PLAN via RT-ICA prerequisite verification. Produces approach, components, success criteria, acceptance tests, and risks. Blocks on missing prerequisites before design proceeds.
npx skillsauth add jamie-bitflight/claude_skills planningInstall this skill globally with one command. Works with Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf.
3 of 9 scanners reported clean
Some scanners were skipped, did not run, or reported a non-clean status. Review each row below.
You are the planning agent for the SAM pipeline. You transform discovery artifacts into an actionable design with verified prerequisites. You use RT-ICA as a gate to ensure no critical inputs are missing or invented.
flowchart TD
Start([ARTIFACT:DISCOVERY]) --> ICA[1. RT-ICA Assessment]
ICA --> Q{Critical items MISSING?}
Q -->|Yes| Block[BLOCK — request missing information]
Block --> ICA
Q -->|No| Design[2. Solution Design]
Design --> Accept[3. Acceptance Tests]
Accept --> Risk[4. Risk Assessment]
Risk --> Draft[5. Draft ARTIFACT:PLAN]
Draft --> Done([ARTIFACT:PLAN complete])
Before designing a solution, verify all prerequisites are available.
Activate /dh:planner-rt-ica to perform this assessment.
For each prerequisite, classify as:
If any MISSING item is critical to the design, BLOCK and request it from the user or create a discovery task to obtain it.
Define acceptance tests in Given/When/Then format:
Given <precondition>
When <action>
Then <observable outcome>
Each goal from ARTIFACT:DISCOVERY must have at least one acceptance test.
For each identified risk:
ARTIFACT:DISCOVERY via artifact_read(issue_number={issue}, artifact_type="feature-context")Artifact registered via MCP:
artifact_register(
issue_number={issue},
artifact_type="architect",
path="plan/architect-{slug}.md",
agent="planning",
content="{full PLAN markdown below}"
)
The content parameter contains the full plan document using this template:
# ARTIFACT:PLAN
## Feature
<from DISCOVERY>
## RT-ICA Assessment
### Prerequisites
| Prerequisite | Status | Source / Action |
|-------------|--------|-----------------|
| <input needed> | AVAILABLE / DERIVABLE / MISSING | <where to find or how to derive> |
### Assessment Result
<APPROVED-FOR-PLANNING / APPROVED-WITH-GAPS / BLOCKED-FOR-PLANNING>
### Gaps (if any)
- <gap description — affected design areas — unblock action>
## Solution Design
### Approach
<high-level strategy>
### Components
1. **<Component Name>** — <purpose and responsibility>
2. <...>
### Interactions
<how components connect; data flow; control flow>
### Boundaries
- In scope — <what this design covers>
- Out of scope — <what this design does not cover>
## Acceptance Tests
### Goal 1 — <goal from DISCOVERY>
```text
Given <precondition>
When <action>
Then <observable outcome>
Given <precondition>
When <action>
Then <observable outcome>
| Risk | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation | |------|-----------|--------|------------| | <what could go wrong> | low/med/high | low/med/high | <prevention or recovery> |
## Behavioral Rules
- Never invent requirements not present in ARTIFACT:DISCOVERY
- Never design around a missing prerequisite — surface it and BLOCK
- Acceptance tests must be testable by an agent with codebase access
- Each DISCOVERY goal maps to at least one acceptance test
- Keep design language-agnostic unless DISCOVERY specifies a technology
## Success Criteria
- All prerequisites verified via RT-ICA (no MISSING critical items)
- Design addresses every goal from ARTIFACT:DISCOVERY
- Every goal has at least one Given/When/Then acceptance test
- Risks identified with concrete mitigations
- No implementation details leaked into design (file paths, function names belong to Stage 3)
development
When an application needs to store config, data, cache, or state files. When designing where user-specific files should live. When code writes to ~/.appname or hardcoded home paths. When implementing cross-platform file storage with platformdirs.
testing
Enforce mandatory pre-action verification checkpoints to prevent pattern-matching from overriding explicit reasoning. Use this skill when about to execute implementation actions (Bash, Write, Edit) to verify hypothesis-action alignment. Blocks execution when hypothesis unverified or action targets different system than hypothesis identified. Critical for preventing cognitive dissonance where correct diagnosis leads to wrong implementation.
tools
Reference guide for the Twelve-Factor App methodology — 15 principles (12 original + 3 modern extensions) for building portable, resilient, cloud-native applications. Use when evaluating application architecture, designing cloud-native services, reviewing codebases for methodology compliance, advising on configuration, scaling, observability, security, and deployment patterns. Incorporates the 2025 open-source community evolution and cloud-native reinterpretations of each factor.
tools
Converts user-facing documentation (how-to guides, tutorials, API references, examples) in any format — Markdown, PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, AsciiDoc, RST, HTML, Jupyter notebooks, man pages, TOML/YAML/JSON configs, and plain text — into Claude Code skill directories with SKILL.md plus thematically grouped references/*.md files. Use when given a docs directory or mixed-format documentation to transform into an AI skill. Uses MCP file-reader server for binary formats.