writing-plans

writing-plans is a skill for Claude Code from bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills. It costs 19 tokens per session (813 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for turning a feature request into a detailed, step-by-step coding plan. It assumes the implementer knows little about the project and explains files, code, tests, and commands to check.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before implementing a feature, bug fix, or refactor, especially when another engineer or coding agent will do the work.
Why use it?
Vague plans leave engineers guessing about the codebase and how to verify their work. This breaks large tasks into small steps with clear expected results.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: disable-model-invocation in frontmatter. Also seen: mentions subagents.

Good fit Use it before implementing a feature, bug fix, or refactor, especially when another engineer or coding agent will do the work.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills/writing-plans
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills --skill writing-plans
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

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 writing-plans

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills/writing-plans/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills/writing-plans)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills/writing-plans"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills/writing-plans/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for writing-plans

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills/writing-plans"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills/writing-plans.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 19 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 813 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00019 $0.00813
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00407
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00163
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00081

Measured 9d ago against content hash c67bfd23c9fc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

writing-plans 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 9d 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.

universal/collaboration/writing-plans/SKILL.md · 84 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 84 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Writing Plans

Overview

Write comprehensive implementation plans assuming the engineer has zero context for our codebase and questionable taste. Document everything they need to know: which files to touch for each task, code, testing, docs they might need to check, how to test it. Give them the whole plan as bite-sized tasks. DRY. YAGNI. TDD. Frequent commits.

Assume they are a skilled developer, but know almost nothing about our toolset or problem domain. Assume they don't know good test design very well.

Announce at start: "I'm using the Writing Plans skill to create the implementation plan."

Context: This should be run in a dedicated worktree (created by brainstorming skill).

Save plans to: docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<feature-name>.md

Quick Reference

Plan header template: See Plan Structure & Templates

Task template: See Plan Structure & Templates

Granularity guide: Each step = 2-5 minutes. See Best Practices

Core Principles

  • Exact file paths always - Not "in the user module" but "src/models/user.py"
  • Complete code in plan - Not "add validation" but show the validation code
  • Exact commands with expected output - "pytest tests/file.py -v" with what you'll see
  • Reference relevant skills - Use @ syntax: @skills/category/skill-name
  • DRY, YAGNI, TDD, frequent commits - Every task follows this pattern

For detailed guidance: Best Practices & Guidelines

Execution Handoff

After saving the plan, offer execution choice:

"Plan complete and saved to docs/plans/<filename>.md. Two execution options:

1. Subagent-Driven (this session) - I dispatch fresh subagent per task, review between tasks, fast iteration

2. Parallel Session (separate) - Open new session with executing-plans, batch execution with checkpoints

Read the full file on GitHub · 84 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 9d ago First seen · 84 lines · 19 tokens per session scan A c67bfd23c9fc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-plans is a skill published in the GitHub repository bobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills (75 stars, last pushed 1mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 19 tokens to every session and 813 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-09-03.

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