plan-mode

A planning guide for coding-agent work, such as feature changes, bug fixes, migrations, and API updates. It requires the agent to understand the project, make a plan, get approval, then implement and test the change.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when planning or scoping a project modification. It supports read-only investigation, focused questions, step-by-step plans, implementation, and validation.
Why use it?
It helps prevent code being changed before the goal, scope, risks, and unclear points are understood. It gives the developer a chance to approve the approach first.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/codealive-ai/ai-driven-development/plan-mode
Any agent
npx skills add CodeAlive-AI/ai-driven-development --skill plan-mode
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/CodeAlive-AI/ai-driven-development

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 123 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 696 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 $0.00123 $0.00696
Opus 5 $0.00062 $0.00348
Sonnet 5 $0.00025 $0.00139
Haiku 4.5 $0.00012 $0.00070

Measured 2d ago against content hash d0f1802462c7, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

plan-mode 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 2d 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.

skills/plan-mode/SKILL.md · 49 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 49 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Plan Mode

Prevent premature implementation. Understand → plan → get approval → implement → validate. Do not skip the gate just because a change looks small.

The full protocol — investigation steps, issue classification, the question and plan templates, validation, and special cases — lives in PROTOCOL.md. Read it before planning or implementing.

Default behavior

  1. Investigate project context (read-only).
  2. Analyze the task: goal, current vs desired behavior, acceptance criteria, scope, edge cases.
  3. Classify open issues as ambiguity / contradiction / blocker / risk / assumption.
  4. Ask the smallest set of focused questions that unblocks planning.
  5. Produce a consistent, evidence-based, step-by-step plan.
  6. Wait for explicit approval.
  7. Implement only the approved plan.
  8. Validate, then report what was and was not checked.

The gate (core rule)

During Plan Mode, do not mutate the project: no editing files, scaffolding, patches, package installs, lockfile updates, migrations, deploys, destructive scripts, or "trying an implementation" to learn the code.

Allowed: read files, search the repo, inspect structure, review tests / docs / configs / API contracts / schemas / migrations, run read-only or non-mutating diagnostic commands, and consult external docs when project context is insufficient.

If a tool or command might mutate state, ask first or avoid it.

Surfacing blockers

Surface ambiguities, contradictions, and blockers before the plan — never bury them inside it. For each, capture: what it is, the evidence, why it matters, whether it blocks implementation, and a proposed default or resolution. If none exist, state No hard blockers found.

Asking questions

Ask only after investigating context, and never for what the repo, tests, docs, or provided context already answer. Group related questions, give each a recommended default, and explain briefly why each answer matters. Avoid open-ended "What should I do?" questions.

Read the full file on GitHub · 49 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 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. 2d ago First seen · 49 lines · 123 tokens per session scan A d0f1802462c7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

plan-mode is a skill published in the GitHub repository CodeAlive-AI/ai-driven-development (131 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 123 tokens to every session and 696 once invoked, about $0.0006 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.

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