plan-down

plan-down is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from VCnoC/Claude-Code-Zen-mcp-Skill-Work. It costs 102 tokens per session (8,971 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A planning workflow that first checks whether a requested implementation method is clear, then creates a structured implementation plan.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to clarify an implementation approach, compare interactive and automated planning paths, validate an uncertain method, and produce a plan.md file.
Why use it?
It adjusts the planning process when the approach is uncertain, using clarification or additional analysis before breaking the work into steps.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions Codex; mentions Gemini CLI.

Not installable: its command points at a path on the author’s own machine, so it runs nowhere else. The line is /home/vc/.claude/CLAUDE.md.

Good fit Use it to clarify an implementation approach, compare interactive and automated planning paths, validate an uncertain method, and produce a plan.md file.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

There is no command for this one: it runs only inside a plugin, and the catalogue could not identify which plugin ships it. The source is linked below.

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 plan-down

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vcnoc/claude-code-zen-mcp-skill-work/plan-down.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/vcnoc/claude-code-zen-mcp-skill-work/plan-down)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/vcnoc/claude-code-zen-mcp-skill-work/plan-down"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/vcnoc/claude-code-zen-mcp-skill-work/plan-down.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 102 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 8,971 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 $0.00102 $0.08971
Opus 5 $0.00051 $0.04485
Sonnet 5 $0.00020 $0.01794
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00897

Measured 7d ago against content hash 843e5d592e34, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

plan-down 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.

skills/plan-down/SKILL.md · 1,034 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 1,034 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Plan-Down - Method-Driven Four-Path Intelligent Planning Generator

Overview

This skill provides a comprehensive method clarity-driven planning workflow that intelligently adapts to both user interaction preference (Interactive/Automatic) and implementation method clarity (Clear/Unclear).

Core Innovation: Uses zen-mcp chat as decision module to assess whether user provides a "clear implementation method" before planning.

Four Execution Paths:

  1. Interactive + Clear: Direct planning with user approval
  2. Interactive + Unclear: Multi-round dialogue to clarify method, then plan
  3. Automatic + Clear: Fully automated planning
  4. Automatic + Unclear: AI chain (clink → chat → consensus) to enrich method, then plan

The final output is a complete plan.md file ready for implementation.

Technical Architecture:

  • zen-mcp chat: Method clarity judgment + interactive clarification + deep thinking (via clink)
  • zen-mcp planner: Interactive, sequential planning tool with revision and branching capabilities
  • zen-mcp consensus: Multi-model method validation (only for Automatic + Unclear path)
  • Main Claude Model: Context gathering, workflow orchestration, plan.md generation
  • User: Provides ideas/requirements (interactive mode) or none (automatic mode)

New Four-Path Workflow:

User Request → Phase 0 (chat: Method Clear?) → [Conditional Phase 1] → Phase 2 (planner) → Phase 3 (plan.md)
                        ↓                              ↓
                   Clear / Unclear           Clear: Skip to Phase 2
                                            Unclear: Phase 1 (Clarify/Enrich)
                                                    ↓
                                            Interactive: Dialogue with user
                                            Automatic: clink → chat → consensus

Division of Responsibilities:

Phase 0 (Method Clarity Assessment - ALWAYS):

  • chat tool: Judge if user provides clear implementation method
  • Main Claude: Gather context from CLAUDE.md/PROJECTWIKI.md

Read the full file on GitHub · 1,034 lines

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 · 1,034 lines · 102 tokens per session scan A 843e5d592e34

Subscribe to this mod's changes

plan-down is a skill published in the GitHub repository VCnoC/Claude-Code-Zen-mcp-Skill-Work (116 stars, last pushed 8mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 102 tokens to every session and 8,971 once invoked, about $0.0005 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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