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name: planning-workflow description: Multi-agent planning workflow for complex tasks. Use when tasks affect multiple subsystems, require extensive codebase exploration, or when context limits may become an issue.

Planning Workflow Skill

Purpose

Workflow for complex plans requiring multiple iterations and context management.

When to use

• Tasks affecting multiple subsystems
• Plans requiring extensive codebase exploration
• Situations where context limits may become an issue

Workflow

Phase 1: Initial Understanding (Explore agents)

1. Launch 1-3 Explore agents in parallel
2. Give each agent a specific focus:
   • Agent 1: Current implementation and patterns
   • Agent 2: Related components/dependencies
   • Agent 3: Test patterns and edge cases
3. Agents report findings with file locations

Phase 2: Design (Plan agents)

1. Launch Plan agent(s) with context from Phase 1
2. Provide:
   • Findings from Explore agents
   • Specific requirements
   • Constraints and preconditions
3. Agent produces implementation plan

Phase 3: Consolidation

1. Read critical files yourself
2. Combine agent findings
3. Ask clarifying questions to user
4. Write final plan to plan file

Phase 4: Plan Refinement Iterations

For complex plans, perform iterative self-review until stable:

Iteration 1 - Completeness Review:

1. Clear current context (start fresh agent)
2. Provide agent with:
   • Original user request
   • Current plan file contents
3. Agent reviews plan for:
   • Completeness (all requirements covered?)
   • Correctness (implementation details accurate?)
   • Edge cases (error handling, validation?)
4. Agent updates plan with improvements
5. Agent reports: "Improvements found: yes/no"

Iteration 2 - Quality Review:

1. Clear context again (fresh agent)
2. Provide agent with:
   • Original user request
   • Updated plan from iteration 1
3. Agent reviews for:
   • Code quality (patterns, best practices?)
   • Testing strategy (coverage, scenarios?)
   • Verification steps (how to validate?)
4. Agent updates plan with improvements
5. Agent reports: "Improvements found: yes/no"

Iteration 3+ - Stability Check (if improvements were found):

1. Clear context (fresh agent)
2. Provide agent with:
   • Original user request
   • Current plan version
3. Agent reviews for any remaining improvements
4. If improvements found:
   • Update plan
   • Trigger another iteration
5. If no improvements found:
   • Plan is stable, proceed to user review

Convergence criteria:

• Maximum 10 iterations to prevent infinite loops
• Stop when agent reports "no improvements found"
• Stop when changes are only cosmetic (formatting, wording)

Phase 5: User Review

1. Present final plan to user
2. Discuss each section
3. Adjust based on feedback
4. Document decisions and rationale

Context management tips

• Agents start with clean context (no prior conversation)
• Provide agents with sufficient background info in the prompt
• Use agents for broad exploration, do targeted reads yourself
• Summarize agent output before proceeding

Example agent prompts

Explore agent:

Search for all places where [X] is used. Focus on:

1. Direct calls
2. Related configuration
3. Test coverage Report filename:line_number for each finding.

Plan agent:

Design implementation for [feature]. Context:

• Current implementation: [summary]
• Involved files: [list]
• Requirements: [list] Produce step-by-step plan with concrete code changes.