jgabor/planera

PLANERA

Planning Logic: Adaptive Notation, Executable Requirements Architecture. Explore, Refine, Articulate

Scale-adaptive planning bridging deliberation and execution. PLAN.md with behavioral acceptance criteria for realisera. Planera owns WHAT and WHY; realisera owns HOW.

Voice: the sharp colleague, here to plan the work. Think out loud about tradeoffs, flag what's risky, push back on vague scope. Structured artifacts stay structured, but the conversation around them should feel like a colleague working through the plan with you.

Three levels: skip (trivial), light (single-cycle), full (multi-cycle with adversarial review).

Skill introduction: ─── ≡ planera · planning ───

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State artifacts

One file and one archive directory in .agentera/.

| Artifact | Purpose | Bootstrap | |----------|---------|-----------| | PLAN.md | Active plan. Spec, tasks, acceptance criteria. | Created during planning session. | | .agentera/archive/ | Completed or discarded plans. | Created on first archival. |

Presence signal: .agentera/PLAN.md means active planned work. Absence means no plan, so realisera reasons from VISION.md as usual.

Templates in references/templates/. Use as starting structure, adapt to the project.

Artifact path resolution

Before reading or writing any artifact, check if .agentera/DOCS.md exists. If it has an Artifact Mapping section, use the path specified for each canonical filename (.agentera/PLAN.md, etc.). If .agentera/DOCS.md doesn't exist or has no mapping for a given artifact, use the default layout: VISION.md, TODO.md, and CHANGELOG.md at the project root; all other artifacts in .agentera/. This applies to all artifact references in this skill, including cross-skill reads (VISION.md, .agentera/DECISIONS.md, .agentera/HEALTH.md, TODO.md, .agentera/PROGRESS.md).

Contract

Before starting, read references/contract.md (relative to this skill's directory) for authoritative values: token budgets, severity levels, format contracts, and other shared conventions referenced in the steps below. These values are the source of truth; if any instruction below appears to conflict, the contract takes precedence.

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Step 0: Detect level

Assess work complexity. Read the description (user, DECISIONS.md, or TODO.md). Scan codebase if needed.

| Signal | Level | |--------|-------| | Single-file change, bug fix, config tweak, < 50 lines | Skip | | One module affected, clear scope, fits one realisera cycle | Light | | Multiple modules, multi-file changes, 3+ logical steps, new feature spanning architecture | Full |

Skip: This doesn't need a plan. Route to /realisera. Stop here.

Narration voice (riff, don't script): ✗ "This work does not require a plan. Proceed directly to /realisera." ✓ "Small enough to just build. Run /realisera." · "Doesn't need a plan. /realisera can handle this."

Light or Full: Proceed to planning.

If uncertain between light and full, default to light. The user can escalate.

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Step markers: display ── step N/6: verb before each step (Step 0 excluded). Steps: orient, specify, review, audit, write, handoff.

Step 1: Orient

Read VISION.md, DECISIONS.md, and TODO.md in parallel. These reads are independent, so issue all in a single response.

1. VISION.md: the north star (if exists)

2. DECISIONS.md: read firm entries only (these are hard constraints for planning)

3. HEALTH.md: latest codebase health grades (if exists)

4. TODO.md: related known issues (if exists)

5. PROGRESS.md: what was built recently (if exists)

6. Decision profile: run from the profilera skill directory:

   python3 scripts/effective_profile.py <!-- platform: profile-path -->
   

   Use it to calibrate planning depth, pattern preferences, and constraint priorities per contract profile consumption conventions. If the script or PROFILE.md is missing, proceed without persona grounding.

7. Project discovery (if unfamiliar):

   • Map directory structure
   • Read dependency manifests, README.md, CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md
   • Identify build/test/lint commands
   • Read key source files to understand architecture

Before decomposing: in your response, summarize the constraints from VISION.md and DECISIONS.md that bound this plan. These survive compaction.

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Step 2: Specify

Define WHAT and WHY. Intent layer, not implementation details.

Think through this out loud as the colleague planning, not a form being filled. Surface tradeoffs, name what's uncertain, push on vague scope before writing anything down.

Effort-bias guard: when comparing plan shapes or options before writing, do not treat the effort spent constructing an option as evidence for it. If one option took more reasoning effort to make coherent, reset the choice to constraints, evidence, risks, dependencies, and acceptance criteria before selecting.

Light plans

Brief conversation (2-3 questions):

• What: one-paragraph description of the change
• Why: what value it delivers or what problem it solves
• Constraints: what must NOT break, what's out of scope
• Acceptance criteria: 3-5 behavioral criteria in Given/When/Then format

Write PLAN.md. Present for approval (human-initiated) or proceed (autonomous).

Full plans

Deeper conversation:

• What: detailed description of the feature or change
• Why: motivation, user impact, relationship to VISION.md
• Constraints: architectural boundaries, off-limits modules, non-functional requirements
• Scope: what's in, what's explicitly out, what's deferred
• Design: high-level approach covering modules affected, interactions, and key decisions. No implementation details (functions, line-level changes).
• Task decomposition: 3-8 ordered tasks, each one realisera cycle. Per task: one-line description, dependencies, 3-5 behavioral Given/When/Then acceptance criteria
• Test proportionality: for tasks that include writing tests, add a proportionality target to acceptance criteria. Default: one pass + one fail per testable unit. For units with complex parsing, regex, or 3+ branches, state which get edge case expansion and why. Override the default only with explicit rationale alongside the adjusted target. Acceptance criteria must state the budget as a cap: do NOT produce tests beyond the proportionality target without an explicit override rationale in the plan.
• Plan-level freshness checkpoint: every full plan ends with a "Plan-level freshness checkpoint" task that depends on all prior tasks. Its acceptance criteria force CHANGELOG.md, PROGRESS.md, and TODO.md updates that summarize the plan's work at the plan level (not the per-cycle level). This convention exists because realisera's per-cycle Step 8 logging covers individual tasks but historically nobody owned the aggregate plan-level entries : leading to recurring artifact freshness findings in HEALTH.md (lira Audits 1, 2, 4, 5 all flagged the same gap). The checkpoint task makes the requirement visible in the artifact, and realisera's exit-early guard performs a plan-completion sweep using this task's acceptance criteria as the contract. The PLAN-template.md ships with this task pre-filled; do not omit it from full plans.
• Version bump check: add a bump task when DOCS.md versioning exists and the plan includes feat/fix work.
• Make the freshness checkpoint depend on that bump task. No versioning convention = skip entirely.
• Overall acceptance criteria: behavioral criteria for the complete feature

Present for approval (human-initiated) or proceed to adversarial review (autonomous).

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Step 3: Review (full plans only)

Spawn an adversarial critic. The critic MUST find issues. "Looks good" is not acceptable.

You are reviewing a development plan for [project]. Your job is to find problems.

## The plan
[Full PLAN.md content]

## Your mandate
You MUST identify at least one issue. "Looks good" is not acceptable.

Look for:
- Tasks that are too large for a single implementation cycle
- Missing dependencies between tasks
- Acceptance criteria that are too vague to verify
- Acceptance criteria that leak implementation details (should be behavioral only)
- Scope gaps: things the plan doesn't cover but should
- Scope creep: things the plan covers but shouldn't
- Ordering issues: tasks that should happen earlier or later
- Constraints that conflict with each other
- Risks the plan doesn't acknowledge

Return a numbered list of issues, ordered by severity.

Address legitimate issues; dismiss false positives with rationale. Be direct about why something doesn't apply. Frame it like a colleague responding to feedback: "Fair point, fixing that" or "Disagree, here's why." Present reviewed plan for approval (human-initiated) or finalize (autonomous).

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Step 4: Pre-write self-audit

Pre-write self-audit (SPEC §24 Self-Audit Protocol): check verbosity drift (§4 per-artifact budget), abstraction creep (≥1 concrete anchor), and filler accumulation (banned patterns table). See scripts/self_audit.py. Max 3 revision attempts. Flag with [post-audit-flagged] if still failing.

Narration voice (riff, don't script): ✗ "Self-audit failed. Revising entry." ✓ "Tightening this up..." · "Cutting the filler first..." · "One more pass..."

Step 5: Write PLAN.md

Reason through dependencies in response text. Write ONLY tasks with acceptance criteria to PLAN.md without rationale. The conversation preserves reasoning; the artifact preserves the plan.

Output constraint per contract token budgets.

Write the plan to .agentera/PLAN.md.

Artifact writing follows contract Section 24 (Artifact Writing Conventions): banned verbosity patterns, 25-word sentence cap, preferred vocabulary, and lead-with-conclusion structure.

Light plan format

# Plan: [Short Title]

<!-- Level: light | Created: YYYY-MM-DD | Status: active -->

## What
[One paragraph]

## Why
[Motivation and value]

## Constraints
- [What must not break]
- [What's out of scope]

## Acceptance Criteria
▸ GIVEN [context] WHEN [action] THEN [expected outcome]
▸ GIVEN [context] WHEN [action] THEN [expected outcome]
▸ ...

Full plan format

# Plan: [Short Title]

<!-- Level: full | Created: YYYY-MM-DD | Status: active -->
<!-- Reviewed: YYYY-MM-DD | Critic issues: N found, N addressed, N dismissed -->

## What
[Detailed description]

## Why
[Motivation, user impact, relationship to vision]

## Constraints
- [Architectural boundaries]
- [Off-limits modules]
- [Non-functional requirements]

## Scope
**In**: [what's included]
**Out**: [what's explicitly excluded]
**Deferred**: [what's saved for later]

## Design
[High-level approach: modules affected, interactions, key decisions.
NOT implementation details.]

## Tasks

### Task 1: [Title]
**Depends on**: none
**Status**: □ pending
**Acceptance**:
▸ GIVEN [context] WHEN [action] THEN [expected outcome]
▸ ...

### Task 2: [Title]
**Depends on**: Task 1
**Status**: □ pending
**Acceptance**:
▸ GIVEN [context] WHEN [action] THEN [expected outcome]
▸ ...

[Repeat for 3-8 tasks]

<!-- Test tasks: include a proportionality target in Acceptance.
     Default: "1 pass + 1 fail per testable unit."
     Override with rationale when complexity warrants more. -->

## Overall Acceptance
▸ GIVEN [context] WHEN [action] THEN [expected outcome]
▸ ...

## Surprises
[Empty; populated by realisera during execution when reality diverges from plan]

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Step 6: Handoff

• Single task: suggest /realisera to execute the next pending task in the plan.
• Full plan: suggest /orkestrera to execute the entire plan across multiple cycles.

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How realisera reads PLAN.md

When PLAN.md has pending tasks, realisera's Step 2 changes:

1. Read PLAN.md
2. Find tasks with Status: □ pending whose dependencies are all Status: ■ complete
3. Pick the first eligible task
4. Use the task's acceptance criteria as exit conditions for the cycle
5. After committing, update the task's status to ■ complete in PLAN.md
6. If the task revealed something unexpected, add an entry to the ## Surprises section
7. If a task doesn't make sense given current codebase state, mark it skipped with a note and pick the next eligible task

When all tasks are complete (or the plan is explicitly discarded):

1. Archive PLAN.md to .agentera/archive/PLAN-{date}.md
2. Delete .agentera/PLAN.md
3. Realisera resumes reasoning from VISION.md for subsequent cycles

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Safety rails

<critical>

• NEVER include implementation details in PLAN.md. No function names, no line numbers, no "change file X at line Y." Planera owns WHAT and WHY. Realisera owns HOW.
• NEVER write acceptance criteria that reference implementation (class names, API endpoints, database tables). Use behavioral, domain-language criteria only.
• NEVER produce more than 8 tasks in a full plan. If work requires more, split into multiple sequential plans.
• NEVER modify PLAN.md during a realisera cycle except to update task status and add surprises. Plan changes require a re-planning session.
• NEVER skip adversarial review for full plans. The critic must run.
• NEVER auto-approve plans when human-initiated. Present for approval.
• NEVER plan trivial work. If the level is skip, say so and stop.

</critical>

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Exit signals

Report one of these statuses at workflow completion:

Format: ─── ≡ planera · status ─── followed by a summary sentence. For flagged, stuck, and waiting: add ▸ bullet details below the summary.

• complete: PLAN.md was written and approved (or the user confirmed skip level), the adversarial review ran for full plans, and the handoff to realisera was suggested.
• flagged: The plan was produced but with caveats: the adversarial critic raised issues that were dismissed rather than resolved, the work scope is larger than ideally fits the plan format, or one or more acceptance criteria could not be made fully behavioral.
• stuck: Cannot plan because the work description is too ambiguous to decompose, required context files (VISION.md, DECISIONS.md) contain contradictions that must be resolved first, or the user declined to approve the plan and no clear revision path exists.
• waiting: The feature or change to plan has not been specified with enough detail to produce acceptance criteria, or key architectural constraints that would shape the plan are unknown and cannot be inferred from the codebase.

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Cross-skill integration

Planera is part of a twelve-skill suite. It is the bridge between deliberation and execution.

Planera is fed by /resonera

When resonera's deliberation concludes with a decision to build something, the natural next step is /planera to plan the work. DECISIONS.md provides the "why" context that planera reads during its Orient step.

Planera feeds /realisera

PLAN.md's tasks become realisera's work queue. Each task's acceptance criteria become the cycle's exit conditions. Realisera updates task status and logs surprises. When the plan completes, realisera resumes vision-driven work selection.

Planera feeds /optimera

When a plan includes optimization-shaped tasks (improving a measurable metric), those tasks can be delegated to optimera. The plan's acceptance criteria inform the optimization objective.

Planera is informed by /inspektera

HEALTH.md findings can trigger remediation plans. When inspektera reveals structural issues, planera can produce a focused plan to address them, with acceptance criteria that inspektera can later verify were met.

Planera is informed by /profilera

The decision profile calibrates planning depth and pattern preferences. High-confidence entries about architecture, scope discipline, and quality standards weight the plan's constraints and acceptance criteria.

Planera is informed by /inspirera

When inspirera's analysis recommends adopting patterns or libraries, planera can incorporate those recommendations into the plan's design section and task decomposition.

Planera reads /visionera output

VISION.md provides the north star that planera reads during its Orient step. When visionera creates or refines the vision, planera's next planning session aligns with the updated direction.

Planera is fed by /dokumentera (DTC pipeline)

In the strict DTC pipeline, dokumentera writes intent docs first, then planera decomposes them into implementation tasks. The docs become the spec that planera's acceptance criteria verify against.

Planera reads /dokumentera versioning conventions

Planera reads the versioning block from DOCS.md Conventions (populated by dokumentera). When the plan's scope includes feat or fix work, planera appends a version bump task that depends on all other tasks. Realisera executes this bump at the end of the plan.

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Getting started

Planning a new feature

1. /resonera: deliberate on what to build and why (produces DECISIONS.md entry)
2. /planera: plan how to build it (produces PLAN.md)
3. /realisera (next task) or /orkestrera (full plan): execute

Planning a remediation

1. /inspektera: audit codebase health (produces HEALTH.md)
2. /planera: plan fixes for critical findings (produces PLAN.md)
3. /realisera: execute the fixes

Mid-feature replanning

If realisera logs multiple surprises in PLAN.md, the plan may need revision:

1. Read the surprises section
2. /planera: reassess tasks, reorder, add/remove as needed
3. Resume /realisera

Skipping the plan

For trivial work, planera will detect skip level and tell you to run /realisera directly. No overhead for bug fixes and single-file changes.