🧠 How to create a plan

🧠 How to create a plan

The structure of a plan, its sections and the rules to shape them are defined in resources/plan-guidelines.md. Read it before proposing anything.

1. Ask the user for the task to create a plan for if not specified.

2. Explore the codebase using subagents, as described in 🔍 Codebase exploration with subagents. Do not explore the codebase yourself: delegate it.

3. Define task phases, letting the user choose the amount of phases as described in the guidelines.

4. Specify the public contracts to be created/modified/deleted on each phase task, as described in the guidelines.

5. Propose the plan to the user for approval. IMPORTANT: Do not start creating the plan file until the user has agreed on the specific contracts to be considered and the implementation phases.

6. Save the plan in a new file inside a subfolder of .agents/plans with the current date and a semantic name based on the task description. The structure is: .agents/plans/{plan-name}/{plan-name}-plan.md. Example: 2026_01_16-create_embeddable_changelog_widget/2026_01_16-create_embeddable_changelog_widget-plan.md.

7. Suggest next steps

   • Once you create the plan file, ask the user what do they want to do:
     • Do not do anything else.
     • Commit the plan file to the repository by running the /codely-git-conventional-commit skill. Consider plan file only changes as docs type.
     • Implement the plan by running the /codely-plan-phase-implement @plan-file-path skill.
     • Commit the plan file and then implement Phase 1 only.

   [!IMPORTANT] If the user asks to "commit and implement", commit the plan file first, then implement only Phase 1. Never implement all phases at once. The /codely-plan-phase-implement skill handles one phase per invocation.

🔍 Codebase exploration with subagents

Gather the context needed for the plan (relevant files, existing conventions, current behavior, affected contracts) by delegating the exploration to subagents instead of reading the codebase yourself. Keep the main agent focused on reasoning and on writing the plan.

• Reuse an existing exploration subagent if there is one.
• Use cheaper models for the subagents. Pick a lighter/faster model from the same family whenever the tool allows overriding it. For example, in a session running Opus, Fable or Sonnet, launch the exploration subagents with Haiku.
• Decide how many subagents to launch based on the task. A small, well-localized change may need a single subagent, while a task touching several bounded contexts, layers, or screens deserves one subagent per independent area of research. Max 4.
• Launch independent subagents in parallel, in a single batch, so the exploration does not become sequential.
• Give each subagent a narrow, self-contained assignment. e.g., explore architecture, frontend, backend, different features, separate repos…
• Ask each one to report back the concrete file paths, the relevant existing contracts, and the conventions to follow, instead of dumping whole files.
• Synthesize the subagent reports yourself before proposing the plan. Read directly only the specific files you still need to confirm a contract or a convention.

🗃️ Frontmatter