Run Planning

Run Planning

> HARD GATE — Before running planning skills, confirm the epic capsule exists and the active story is clear. Planning without a target is noise. > > Role: DISCOVER-PHASE ADVANCER — orchestrates the discover-phase sequence; hands off to the scope-work → slice-tasks → plan-work spine for implementation planning.

Updates specs/planning-status.yaml as discover-phase skills complete. This is NOT a duplicate of plan-work — it orchestrates the pre-coding discovery phase only (Discover phase in the 6-phase PMBOK lifecycle), handing off to the planning spine for implementation detail.

When to use

• Starting a brand-new feature or initiative with no prior planning artifacts
• Returning to a stalled initiative and needing to resume the discovery workflow
• After orchestrate-project hands off to the Discover phase
• When a new epic emerges from change-request and needs to go through full discovery

Pre-flight

• [ ] Does specs/planning-status.yaml exist? If not, create it with the default workflow keys.
• [ ] Does specs/state.yaml have active_flow: planning? Set it if not already.
• [ ] Is the epic identified in release-plan.yaml? The epic must exist before discovery begins.

Workflows (default keys)

• survey-context → scope-work → research-first → elaborate-spec (optional) → plan-release → slice-tasks

Each key maps to a skill invocation. Optional keys can be skipped; required keys must complete before the phase advances.

Process

1. Read state — Read specs/planning-status.yaml and specs/state.yaml. Understand where discovery stands: which workflow keys are done, which are pending, and which are optional (can be skipped).

1. Find next step — Find the first workflow key with status: pending. If the key is optional, check if the user wants to run it. If not, mark it skipped.

2a. Context capsule check — Before invoking elaborate-spec, check whether a fresh specs/planning-context.yaml exists: ``bash test -f specs/planning-context.yaml && python3 -c " import yaml, datetime d = yaml.safe_load(open('specs/planning-context.yaml')) written = d.get('written_at','') if written: age = (datetime.datetime.now(datetime.timezone.utc) - datetime.datetime.fromisoformat(written)).total_seconds() / 3600 print(f'Context age: {age:.1f}h') " 2>/dev/null || echo "No context or no written_at" ``

• If context is **'. Re-run elaborate-spec? [y/N]"`. Skip elaborate-spec on N.
• If context is ≥ 24h old or absent, run elaborate-spec normally.
• On planning cycle completion (all required keys done), clear the capsule: delete specs/planning-context.yaml and set planning-status.yaml context_capsule: null.

1. Invoke the matching skill — Run the skill that matches the workflow key:

• survey-context — where are we?
• scope-work — what's in and out?
• research-first — what already exists?
• elaborate-spec — refine the idea (optional)
• plan-release — sequence epics by WSJF
• slice-tasks — cut vertical slices

1. Update status — On successful completion, set status: done for that workflow key in planning-status.yaml.

1. Advance — Set state.yaml active_flow: planning while in this chain. When all required keys are done, set handoff.next_skill to plan-work.

Workflow Keys Schema

In specs/planning-status.yaml:

context_capsule:             # written by elaborate-spec; cleared on cycle completion
  written_at: "2026-06-22T03:00:00Z"
  written_by: elaborate-spec
  feature_name: "add dark mode"
workflows:
  survey-context:
    required: true
    status: done
  scope-work:
    required: true
    status: pending
  research-first:
    required: false
    status: optional
    note: "Skip if no external dependencies"
  elaborate-spec:
    required: false
    status: optional
  plan-release:
    required: true
    status: pending
  slice-tasks:
    required: true
    status: pending

Verify

→ verify: test -f specs/planning-status.yaml && grep -c 'status: done' specs/planning-status.yaml | awk '{if($1>=3) print "OK"; else print "INCOMPLETE"}'

Source & license

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

• Author: danielvm-git
• Source: danielvm-git/bigpowers
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://github.com/danielvm-git/bigpowers

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