Elenchus Plan

Elenchus — plan front end

The plan/verification front end over the elenchus-council engine. It takes an approved spec, writes an implementation plan, and has the anonymized council verify the written plan — replacing the solo "fresh eyes" self-review that plain writing-plans ships with. It also lets the deepest-reasoning tier propose whether the spec should become several plans, as a suggestion the user approves.

Two skills compose here — read both, re-teach neither:

• writing-plans is the base layer: it owns the plan-authoring craft — file-structure mapping, bite-sized task granularity, the plan header + task schema, the no-placeholders rules, and the Execution Handoff. REQUIRED SUB-SKILL: Use writing-plans to draft the plan. Do not re-explain its rules here.
• elenchus-council owns the loop — parallel anonymized seats, tier decorrelation, dissent-preserving synthesis, the gate. Read elenchus-council/SKILL.md and run its loop for the verification round. Do not re-implement it.

This file supplies only the plan-mode specifics: what to add on top of writing-plans, the two round templates, the roster gate, the checkpoint, and the terminal.

What this changes about plain writing-plans

writing-plans does two things solo that this front end moves to the council / the user — this is the whole point of the skill, and baseline agents skip it because writing-plans explicitly prescribes the solo versions:

Do not run writing-plans' Self-Review or act on its Scope Check yourself. Use writing-plans for craft; the verification and the split decision belong to the council and the user respectively.

Flow

1. Input: an approved spec (from the build → brainstorming pipeline, or any spec the user points at). Read it.
2. Split suggestion (deep-tier, one seat, BEFORE writing anything). Confirm the roster (see gate), then dispatch one seat on the deepest tier (Fable; Opus fallback) via the engine with templates/split-suggestion.md + the spec. It returns an advisory RECOMMENDATION / SEAM / RATIONALE / RISK IF IGNORED. Present it to the user and get their call — one plan, the proposed split, or their own division. Nothing is written until they choose. Record the approved division in the checkpoint.
3. Draft the plan(s). Using writing-plans, write the draft plan(s) to docs/superpowers/plans/<YYYY-MM-DD>-<slug>.md — one file per approved plan (if split, also write the shared-contract/foundational plan the seam needs first).
4. Verify (plan-check council round — replaces Self-Review). Confirm the roster again, then dispatch the full anonymized council via the engine with templates/round-plan-check.md, giving each seat the spec + the draft plan (one dispatch set per plan file if split). Anonymize + synthesize dissent-preserving as any engine round. Schema: COVERED / GAPS / DEFECTS.
5. Revise. The chairman fixes every GAP and DEFECT inline — add the missing task, kill the placeholder, reconcile the mismatched signature, re-ground the stale API. If the revisions were substantial, re-verify.
6. Terminal = writing-plans' Execution Handoff, unchanged: offer Subagent-Driven (recommended) vs Inline execution, and hand to the chosen sub-skill.

No readiness/verdict — the engine invariant holds. The council flags coverage gaps and defects; it never certifies the plan "ready to build." The user owns that.

Roster gate (suite invariant — every dispatching round)

Confirm the seat roster with the user before EVERY dispatch — the split-suggestion dispatch (step 2) and the plan-check dispatch (step 4), and on resume. Present the roster you intend to use (models + per-seat lens), and dispatch only after the user agrees or edits it. The split-suggestion step is a single Fable seat by default — say so and let the user change it. Never dispatch on a silently-reused or assumed roster.

Round templates (plan mode)

Owned by this front end; composed by the engine (seat-base + template + tier row):

• templates/split-suggestion.md — one deep-tier seat, advisory split proposal, run before drafting. Returned to the user, not acted on.
• templates/round-plan-check.md — full council, audits the written plan against the spec for coverage + executability. COVERED / GAPS / DEFECTS.

Reuses engine seat-base.md + tiers.md unchanged. Grounding: seats verify every framework/API a task leans on against current docs (Context7 first, web second).

The checkpoint file (durable state)

One markdown file per plan session survives /clear.

• Path: docs/elenchus/<slug>-plan.md (slug from the spec/feature name).
• Gitignore docs/elenchus/ first — append the line to the caller project's .gitignore (create it if absent) before the first checkpoint write. The plan files under docs/superpowers/plans/ are real deliverables and are NOT gitignored.
• Write it DURING the round, before the user clears — never a SessionEnd hook. After the split suggestion + user's choice, record the approved division. After the plan-check round, record COVERED/GAPS/DEFECTS and what was revised.
• Resume = scan-on-invoke. When convened, Read docs/elenchus/ for an open (ready: false) plan session; resume from its round.

Frontmatter schema:

---
artifact: elenchus-plan-session
spec_path: "<path to the approved spec>"
ready: false          # user self-declares; the council never sets it
round: split          # split = suggestion posed, awaiting user's plan-count call
                      # · plan-check = plan drafted, awaiting/under council audit
split: "<one plan | N plans: names>"   # the USER-approved division
plan_paths: [docs/superpowers/plans/<...>.md, ...]
seats:                # the USER-approved roster for the current dispatch
  - {model: fable, lens: split-suggestion}   # step 2 default: one deep seat
gaps: [...]           # unresolved GAPS/DEFECTS from the plan-check round
created: <date>
updated: <date>
---

Body: the spec path + one-line premise; a Split section (the seat's proposal + the user's decision); the plan paths; a Plan-check section (COVERED / GAPS / DEFECTS + what was revised).

Common mistakes (plan front end)

Drawn from observed baseline behavior — both are the default pull, not edge cases:

• Running writing-plans' solo Self-Review instead of the council. The baseline agent literally ran that checklist verbatim and called the plan verified. A solo pass is not verification here — it is REPLACED by the plan-check council.
• Deciding the plan count yourself and writing the files. The baseline agent wrote three plan files to disk unprompted, citing writing-plans' Scope Check. The split is a suggestion returned for approval; write nothing until the user picks.
• Dispatching either round on a roster the user didn't confirm this round.
• Treating COVERED as a readiness sign-off — it is a fidelity check, not a green light.
• Leaving a GAP/DEFECT unrevised because it seems minor. Fix every one, then re-verify if the fixes were substantial.
• Smoothing a genuine split between seats in the plan-check synthesis into "they agree."

Rationalization table (excuse → reality)

Red flags — stop if you catch yourself

• About to run a solo "fresh eyes" review of the plan instead of dispatching the council.
• About to write plan files before the user approved the plan count.
• About to dispatch a round on a roster the user didn't confirm this round.
• About to call the plan "ready to build" — that's the user's declaration, never yours.
• About to leave a plan-check GAP/DEFECT unfixed because it "looks small."

Install / sync

Skill lives at skills/elenchus-plan/ (version-controlled archive) and must be synced to ~/.claude/skills/elenchus-plan/ (the runtime copy Claude Code loads). It dispatches the existing council-seat agent — no new agent, but a fresh session is still required if council-seat was (re)installed this session.