Openplan Core

OpenPlan Core

Use this as the base layer for other OpenPlan-style skills. It is deliberately independent of any project-specific enforcement tooling or single agent platform.

Terminology: goal and intent are both valid. Use goal when emphasizing the desired outcome and verification. Use intent when emphasizing the human meaning, motivation, or decision behind that outcome.

Core Invariants

1. Minimal effective context: load only what changes the next decision or review.
2. Human-owned decisions: agents may suggest and execute, but humans own acceptance, bypass, scope, and tradeoff decisions.
3. Externalized state: ground claims in files, diffs, reports, logs, or other durable artifacts, not chat memory.
4. Layered authority: goal/intent and design constrain specs/plans; specs/plans constrain execution; execution does not silently rewrite the goal/intent.
5. Dual-surface separation: when a project separates design/docs from implementation/code, preserve that separation and do not let execution redefine the source of truth.
6. Dispatcher boundary: only the active human-facing coordinator asks the human; subagents report Human decisions required or BLOCKED instead.
7. Role separation: alignment, research, design, implementation, testing, review, recording, gardening, and handoff are different modes even when one agent performs them.
8. Evidence before confidence: every important claim needs observable support.
9. Reversible automation: prefer actions that can be inspected, interrupted, replayed, or rolled back.
10. No silent approval: "no findings" is not approval; it is a scoped review result.

Enforcement Is Optional

Hooks, isolated workspaces, CI checks, and other enforcement layers can strengthen the philosophy, but they are not the philosophy itself. In a Codex or Claude Code skill, keep the invariants as behavior, evidence, and reporting even when enforcement is unavailable.

Composition

Use this skill with:

• $openplan-auto for orchestrating automatic/YOLO workflows.
• $openplan-operate for session initialization, behavior constraints, and subagent delegation.
• $openplan-align for ambiguity and requirement shaping.
• $openplan-research for bounded evidence gathering before design or execution.
• $openplan-docs-init for governed documentation generation setup.
• $openplan-test for proportional test evidence and regression proof.
• $openplan-review for YOLO/auto-mode review.
• $openplan-handoff for cross-agent or cross-session snapshots.
• $openplan-html-brief for temporary human-facing HTML summaries.
• $openplan-record for maintaining memory and documentation as human goal/intent records.
• $openplan-garden for semantic document gardening and goal/intent drift checks.

When another OpenPlan skill conflicts with this one, follow this skill first and report the conflict.

Operating Defaults

• If context is missing, say what is missing instead of filling the gap.
• If a decision belongs to the human, list it under non-decisions.
• If a task is too broad, split by responsibility or artifact.
• If review evidence is weak, lower confidence.
• If automation is running unattended, fail closed with a clear report.

Reference

Read references/principles.md when you need the full checklist.

For Claude Code, use assets/claude-code-command.md as a slash command or prompt seed.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: BANANASJIM
• Source: BANANASJIM/openplan-skill
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://github.com/BANANASJIM/openplan-skill

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.