A planning command that turns a software issue into a bounded implementation and verification contract. It records the goal, acceptance criteria, non-goals, affected code, risks, steps, and checks before implementation begins.

Use it to prepare an issue-ready plan with compatibility, release, and rollback considerations without editing implementation files.

It exposes missing decisions and separates known facts from assumptions, reducing the chance of building the wrong thing. It also gives the developer clear commands for checking the finished work.

How microsoft/cates configures GitHub Copilot

About the project

CATES is a vendor-neutral analyzer for measuring coding-agent configurations against token-efficiency, security, and conformance rules. Teams use its command-line tools or Docker image to inspect instructions, prompts, MCP settings, hooks, and editor configuration, and to apply selected lossless optimizations.

microsoft/cates · 15 stars · on GitHub

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to microsoft/cates. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/cates/main/.github/prompts/sdlc-plan.prompt.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/microsoft/cates

Made for: GitHub Copilot.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/microsoft/cates/sdlc-plan/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/microsoft/cates/sdlc-plan)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/microsoft/cates/sdlc-plan"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/microsoft/cates/sdlc-plan/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/microsoft/cates/sdlc-plan"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/microsoft/cates/sdlc-plan.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 11 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.

When invoked 109 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00011	$0.00109
Opus 5.5	$0.00004	$0.00044
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00002	$0.00022
Haiku 4.5	$0.00001	$0.00011

Measured 3d ago against content hash 3d7926882610, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

sdlc-plan 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 3d 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.

.github/prompts/sdlc-plan.prompt.md · 13 lines

What it actually says

Plan the task supplied by the user; do not edit implementation files yet. Read the relevant repository instructions and affected code/tests. Return a concise issue-ready contract: problem, acceptance criteria, non-goals, affected surfaces, compatibility/versioning impact, minimal implementation steps, verification commands and release/rollback considerations. Separate repository facts from assumptions. Flag missing high-impact decisions. Do not create a planning file or post to GitHub unless requested.

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.

3d ago First seen · 13 lines · 11 tokens per session scan A 3d7926882610

Subscribe to this mod's changes

sdlc-plan is a command published in the GitHub repository microsoft/cates (15 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed MIT. It adds 11 tokens to every session and 109 once invoked, about $0.0000 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-11-08.

Planning

sdlc-plan next to 6 commands from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
sdlc-planmicrosoft/cates	Command	15	yesterday	MIT	A	11	GitHub Copilot
checklistgithub/spec-kit	Command	149k	today	MIT	A	13	Claude Code
clarifygithub/spec-kit	Command	149k	today	MIT	A	27	Claude Code
specifygithub/spec-kit	Command	149k	today	MIT	A	13	Claude Code
convergegithub/spec-kit	Command	149k	today	MIT	A	35	Claude Code
implementgithub/spec-kit	Command	149k	today	MIT	A	14	Claude Code
speckit.bug.fixgithub/spec-kit	Command	149k	today	MIT	A	12	Claude Code

cates: Command for GitHub Copilot