cycle-design

cycle-design is a command for Claude Code from drobins25/craft. It costs 45 tokens per session (3,270 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A command for planning a development cycle, a defined period of related work, by creating detailed stories or outlining a roadmap.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to start a new cycle, expand an existing planning cycle into detailed stories, or sketch a roadmap.
Why use it?
It turns broad plans into aligned, implementable work and can use planning documents already stored in the project.

Command for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable. Also seen: names the AskUserQuestion tool.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the craft plugin — 29 commands, 27 agents, 1 MCP server shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add drobins25/craft
Claude Code
/plugin install craft

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install craft, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 29 commands, 27 agents, 1 MCP server.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for cycle-design

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/drobins25/craft/craft-cycle-design.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/drobins25/craft/craft-cycle-design)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/drobins25/craft/craft-cycle-design"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/drobins25/craft/craft-cycle-design.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 45 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 3,270 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00045 $0.03270
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.01635
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00654
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00327

Measured 6d ago against content hash 5d62a65bac54, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

cycle-design scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

commands/craft-cycle-design.md · 304 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 304 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Cycle Design

Create a new cycle or detail an existing one — this IS the planning phase. Stories come out fully fleshed with implementation details.

Phase Dispatch (runs before Step 1)

If args specify an existing planning cycle directory (e.g., /craft:cycle-design 5-auth-flow AND .craft/cycles/5-auth-flow/cycle.yaml exists with status: planning):

→ Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/commands/references/cycle-design/detailing-mode.md for the flesh-out flow.

If args are provided AND .craft/cycles/[arg]/cycle.yaml exists but status is NOT planning (i.e., cycle is ready, active, or complete):

→ Show error: "Cycle [arg] is not in planning status. Use /craft:cycle-start [arg] to activate it, or run /craft:cycle-design without args to create a new cycle." Stop. Do NOT continue to Philosophy or Step 1.

Otherwise (no args, or args don't match an existing cycle directory): Continue to Philosophy and the standard flow below.


Philosophy

Plan first. Files last. Align before you chunk.

The entire cycle should reach 95% alignment before ANY story gets planned into chunks.

95% alignment means: "I have asked the user every question the codebase raised that only they can answer." It's about capturing the user's intent - not about whether the solution approach is right. A spawned Explore agent investigates the codebase and surfaces conflicts, adjacencies, and assumptions; the orchestrator turns those findings into product questions and confirms the user's decisions through dialogue. The orchestrator does not do the investigation itself - it spawns the agent. See commands/references/alignment-check.md for the full pattern.

  1. Discuss everything in conversation
  2. Lock decisions as you go
  3. Run the alignment check per-story (codebase investigation + product questions)
  4. Confirm the whole plan
  5. THEN plan chunks (with full alignment)

No half-baked stories. No "I'll figure it out during implementation." Align thoroughly, execute confidently.

Read the full file on GitHub · 304 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 304 lines · 45 tokens per session scan A 5d62a65bac54

Subscribe to this mod's changes

cycle-design is a command published in the GitHub repository drobins25/craft (53 stars, last pushed 7d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 45 tokens to every session and 3,270 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.