planning

planning is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from iliaal/whetstone. It costs 55 tokens per session (1,088 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A file-based method for planning software work, storing the plan, discoveries, progress, and test results in project files. It is intended for complex changes or work involving several steps.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to break down features, plan multi-file changes, record research, track implementation progress, and define concrete verification steps.
Why use it?
It prevents important decisions and findings from being lost during a long task and makes the work easier to track.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to break down features, plan multi-file changes, record research, track implementation progress, and define concrete verification steps.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/iliaal/whetstone/planning
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 iliaal/whetstone --skill planning
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/iliaal/whetstone

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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 planning

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iliaal/whetstone/planning.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/iliaal/whetstone/planning)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/iliaal/whetstone/planning"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/iliaal/whetstone/planning.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 55 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,088 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 $0.00055 $0.01088
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00544
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00218
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00109

Measured 7d ago against content hash c3e065d6d063, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

planning 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 7d 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.

distillery/generated-skills/planning/SKILL.md · 144 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 144 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Planning

Core Principle

Context window = RAM (volatile, limited)
Filesystem     = Disk (persistent, unlimited)
→ Anything important gets written to disk.

Planning tokens are cheaper than implementation tokens. Front-load thinking; scale effort to complexity.

When to Plan

  • Always plan: multi-file changes, new features, refactors, >5 tool calls
  • Skip planning: single-file edits, quick lookups, simple questions

Planning Files

Create in project root before starting work:

File Purpose Update When
task_plan.md Phases, tasks, decisions, errors After each phase
findings.md Research, discoveries, code analysis After any discovery
progress.md Session log, test results, files changed Throughout session

Plan Template

# Plan: [Feature/Task Name]

## Approach
[1-3 sentences: what and why]

## Scope
- **In**: [what's included]
- **Out**: [what's explicitly excluded]

## Phase 1: [Name]
**Files**: [specific files, max 5-8 per phase]
**Tasks**:
- [ ] [Verb-first atomic task] — `path/to/file.ts`
- [ ] [Next task]
**Verify**: [specific test: "POST /api/users → 201", not "test feature"]
**Exit**: [clear done definition]

## Phase 2: [Name]
...

## Open Questions
- [Max 3, only truly blocking unknowns]

Phase Sizing Rules

Every phase must be context-safe:

  • Max 5-8 files touched
  • Max 2 dependencies on other phases
  • Fits in one 2-4 hour session (implementation + verification + fixes)
  • If a phase violates these → split it

Clarifying Questions

Scale to complexity:

  • Small task: 0-1 questions, assume reasonable defaults
  • Medium feature: 1-2 questions on critical unknowns
  • Large project: 3-5 questions (auth, data model, integrations, scope)

Only ask if truly blocking. Make reasonable assumptions for everything else.

Task Rules

  • Atomic: one logical unit of work per task
  • Verb-first: "Add...", "Create...", "Refactor...", "Verify..."
  • Concrete: name specific files, endpoints, components
  • Ordered: respect dependencies, sequential when needed
  • Verifiable: include at least one validation task per phase

Read the full file on GitHub · 144 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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. 7d ago First seen · 144 lines · 55 tokens per session scan A c3e065d6d063

Subscribe to this mod's changes

planning is a skill published in the GitHub repository iliaal/whetstone (33 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 55 tokens to every session and 1,088 once invoked, about $0.0003 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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