flow-next-plan

Flow plan

Turn an idea or an existing spec into a spec with right-sized tasks in .flow/, grounded in repo research. Plan writes no code.

Read working-rules.md first unless you already have this run; it holds for every step of this skill.

.flow/ is the only task tracker. Every spec and task is created or changed through flowctl. A markdown TODO list, a TodoWrite call, or a plan file kept outside .flow/ as the record has broken this.

Preamble

flowctl is bundled, not installed globally (which flowctl fails). Define it once; later blocks here and in steps.md use $FLOWCTL:

FLOWCTL="${CODEX_HOME:-$HOME/.codex}/scripts/flowctl"
[ -x "$FLOWCTL" ] || FLOWCTL="<plugin-root>/scripts/flowctl"   # <plugin-root> = the directory two levels above this skill's SKILL.md file (the harness gave you that file's absolute path when the skill loaded); substitute it literally
[ -x "$FLOWCTL" ] || FLOWCTL=".flow/bin/flowctl"

Check once for flowctl copies left by an older install layout:

LEFTOVERS=""
for p in .flow/bin/flowctl .flow/bin/flowctl.cmd .flow/bin/flowctl.py \
         .flow/bin/flowctl_bootstrap.py .flow/bin/flowctl-help.txt \
         .flow/bin/flowctl_tracker .flow/templates/spec.md .flow/usage.md; do
  [ -e "$p" ] && LEFTOVERS="${LEFTOVERS}${p}"$'\n' || true
done   # || true: an empty LEFTOVERS (the normal case) must read as success

None present: say nothing. Any present: print one line saying nothing reads them and they can be deleted by hand or by /flow-next:setup, then continue. Never ask, stop, or delete here.

No implementation code

The spec states what and why as contracts; each task states how: named files, the repo pattern to follow (file:line), ordering, and non-obvious gotchas. Code in a plan is limited to signatures and interfaces, pointers to existing patterns, a recent or surprising API from docs-scout, and a gotcha from practice-scout. A full function or module body, or a copy-paste block over about 10 lines, has broken this: implementation happens in /flow-next:work with fresh context, and code written here is paid for again there and drifts.