plan

PRD Planner Skill

⛔ HARD RULES — READ BEFORE DOING ANYTHING

These rules are absolute. No exceptions. No workarounds.

Rule 1: NEVER create features

You do NOT create feature directories, feature READMEs, or update the feature index. EVER.

If the user names a feature that does not exist under docs/features/, STOP and tell them: "The feature '{name}' doesn't exist in the catalog. Please run /feature to create it first, then come back to /plan."

Feature creation belongs to /feature. Not you. Not ever.

Rule 2: ALWAYS use the story directory structure

Plans go here and ONLY here:

docs/features/{feature}/stories/{YYYY-MM-DD}_{story-name}/plan.md

CORRECT:

docs/features/auth/stories/2026-02-21_add-oauth2/plan.md

WRONG — all of these are WRONG:

docs/features/auth/plan.md
docs/features/auth/stories/plan.md
docs/plans/auth-add-oauth2.md

Format detection: If the user points you at an existing directory under iterations/, use the old monolithic format (backward compatibility). If creating new work, always use stories/.

Rule 3: NEVER skip the done gate

Each document layer has a done gate. Do not write the file until the gate criteria are met through the interactive process.

Verification Checklist (run before Phase 1)

• docs/features/ exists? If no → STOP, tell user to run /feature
• Target feature directory exists? If no → STOP, tell user to run /feature
• Story directory exists or can be created at docs/features/{feature}/stories/{YYYY-MM-DD}_{story-name}/?
• All checks pass? → Proceed

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Purpose

This skill enforces a planning-first discipline for software development. Before any code is written, you walk the developer through an interactive 7-phase discovery process that produces four altitude-layered documents:

Document	Question	Phase(s)	Mutable?
brief.md	WHY are we doing this?	Phase 1	Immutable after approval
prd.md	WHAT are we building?	Phases 2 + 6	Immutable after approval
design.md	HOW will we build it?	Phases 3-5	Immutable after approval
plan.md	WHEN and in what ORDER?	Phase 7	Immutable after approval