writing-plans

A skill for writing detailed implementation plans from a software specification. The plans explain the files, code changes, tests, documentation, and small tasks needed to build the feature.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it before implementing a multi-step feature to create a plan under the required documentation path, with testable tasks and guidance on files and verification.
Why use it?
It helps developers turn requirements into an actionable sequence when they do not yet know the codebase or the relevant tools. It also checks whether a large request should be split into separate plans.

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

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 21 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,595 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 $0.00021 $0.01595
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.00797
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00319
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00160

Measured 2d ago against content hash 48508f44bbfd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, 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 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.

Origin

Copies of this mod

8 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/writing-plans/SKILL.md · 172 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 172 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: If working in an isolated worktree, it should have been created via the superpowers:using-git-worktrees skill at execution time.

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

  • (User preferences for plan location override this default)

Scope Check

If the spec covers multiple independent subsystems, it should have been broken into sub-project specs during brainstorming. If it wasn't, suggest breaking this into separate plans — one per subsystem. Each plan should produce working, testable software on its own.

File Structure

Before defining tasks, map out which files will be created or modified and what each one is responsible for. This is where decomposition decisions get locked in.

  • Design units with clear boundaries and well-defined interfaces. Each file should have one clear responsibility.
  • You reason best about code you can hold in context at once, and your edits are more reliable when files are focused. Prefer smaller, focused files over large ones that do too much.
  • Files that change together should live together. Split by responsibility, not by technical layer.
  • In existing codebases, follow established patterns. If the codebase uses large files, don't unilaterally restructure - but if a file you're modifying has grown unwieldy, including a split in the plan is reasonable.

This structure informs the task decomposition. Each task should produce self-contained changes that make sense independently.

Read the full file on GitHub · 172 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. 2d ago First seen · 172 lines · 21 tokens per session scan A 48508f44bbfd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-plans is a skill published in the GitHub repository obra/superpowers (280,216 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 21 tokens to every session and 1,595 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 2026-08-30.

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