What is planning-with-files?

A file-based planning method that stores a task plan, research notes, and progress in Markdown files inside the project.

It helps break down multi-step projects, research tasks, and work that requires many tool calls.

It keeps important decisions and progress available across long tasks or interrupted sessions, instead of relying only on the conversation.

How YuppyChen/ai-novelist configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to YuppyChen/ai-novelist. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/YuppyChen/ai-novelist/main/.claude/skills/planning-with-files/SKILL.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/YuppyChen/ai-novelist

Made for: Claude Code.

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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yuppychen/ai-novelist/planning-with-files/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/yuppychen/ai-novelist/planning-with-files)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yuppychen/ai-novelist/planning-with-files"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yuppychen/ai-novelist/planning-with-files/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/yuppychen/ai-novelist/planning-with-files"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/yuppychen/ai-novelist/planning-with-files.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 69 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,709 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 83% copy Near-identical to another mod 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00069	$0.01709
Opus 5.5	$0.00028	$0.00684
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00014	$0.00342
Haiku 4.5	$0.00007	$0.00171

Measured 2mo ago against content hash 130fb0ef5bdd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

planning-with-files 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 2mo ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 5 executable files (scripts/check-complete.ps1, scripts/check-complete.sh, scripts/init-session.ps1, …), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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

This is a copy

83% identical to planning-with-files — 41 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

.claude/skills/planning-with-files/SKILL.md · 218 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 218 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Planning with Files

Work like Manus: Use persistent markdown files as your "working memory on disk."

FIRST: Check for Previous Session (v2.2.0)

Before starting work, check for unsynced context from a previous session:

# Linux/macOS
$(command -v python3 || command -v python) ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/session-catchup.py "$(pwd)"

# Windows PowerShell
& (Get-Command python -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue).Source "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\skills\planning-with-files\scripts\session-catchup.py" (Get-Location)

If catchup report shows unsynced context:

Run git diff --stat to see actual code changes
Read current planning files
Update planning files based on catchup + git diff
Then proceed with task

Important: Where Files Go

Templates are in ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/templates/
Your planning files go in your project directory

Location	What Goes There
Skill directory (`${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/`)	Templates, scripts, reference docs
Your project directory	`task_plan.md`, `findings.md`, `progress.md`

Quick Start

Before ANY complex task:

Create task_plan.md — Use templates/task_plan.md as reference
Create findings.md — Use templates/findings.md as reference
Create progress.md — Use templates/progress.md as reference
Re-read plan before decisions — Refreshes goals in attention window
Update after each phase — Mark complete, log errors

Note: Planning files go in your project root, not the skill installation folder.

The Core Pattern

Context Window = RAM (volatile, limited)
Filesystem = Disk (persistent, unlimited)

→ Anything important gets written to disk.

File Purposes

File	Purpose	When to Update
`task_plan.md`	Phases, progress, decisions	After each phase
`findings.md`	Research, discoveries	After ANY discovery
`progress.md`	Session log, test results	Throughout session

Read the full file on GitHub · 218 lines

Files

What ships with it

10 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.

2mo ago First seen · 218 lines · 69 tokens per session scan A 130fb0ef5bdd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

planning-with-files is a skill published in the GitHub repository YuppyChen/ai-novelist (93 stars, last pushed 6mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 69 tokens to every session and 1,709 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 83% identical to planning-with-files, differing in 41 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Planning

planning-with-files next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
planning-with-filesYuppyChen/ai-novelist	Skill	93	6mo ago	MIT	A	69	Claude Code
imagegenopenai/codex	Skill	134k	today	Apache-2.0	A	113	Codex
local-ai-agentsmicrosoft/ai-agents-for-beginners	Skill	79k	today	MIT	A	200	Claude Code, Codex
playwright-climicrosoft/playwright	Skill	99k	today	Apache-2.0	A	19	Claude Code
systematic-debuggingobra/superpowers	Skill	314k	3d ago	MIT	A	21	Claude Code
next-cache-components-adoptionvercel/next.js	Skill	143k	today	MIT	A	95	Claude Code
chat-pet-sprite-creationmicrosoft/vscode	Skill	195k	today	MIT	A	53	Claude Code, Codex

ai-novelist: Skill for Claude Code