Plan Proposal

plan-proposal

Orchestrates the planning phase of an OpenSpec change on develop. Composes existing skills — it does not reimplement them. Twin of ship-it, which owns the implementation phase inside the worktree. The two split at the git-worktree boundary, which is also the interactive/headless line.

flowchart LR
  subgraph Planning ["PLANNING — develop, human present"]
    A["new/ff/continue"] --> B["doubt-review"]
    B --> C["scenario-design + category-fold + manifest"]
    C --> D["plan-proposal (this skill)"]
  end
  D -->|"boundary: commit + spawn worktree"| E["ship-it"]
  subgraph Implementation ["IMPLEMENTATION — worktree"]
    E
  end

Hard constraint — main session only (never a subagent)

plan-proposal MUST run in the main interactive session. It invokes doubt-driven-review (which spawns a fresh-context reviewer, and interactively a second cross-model reviewer — nested subagent spawn is blocked) and scenario-design (whose proposal/design-stage HARD gate calls ask_user). Both need a live main session.

Guard: if you detect you are running inside a subagent context (nested reviewer spawn would be blocked, or ask_user is unavailable), STOP and surface: "plan-proposal must run in the main session — doubt-review and the scenario-design gate cannot run nested. Re-invoke from the main session on develop." Do not degrade the doubt-review to a self-questioning fallback.

Preconditions

• On the develop branch (planning happens on develop; the worktree is spawned from the planning commit).
• openspec CLI available; resolve the change name from --change <name>, the conversation, or openspec list --json (ask if ambiguous).
• Announce: "Planning change: <change> (override with /plan-proposal <other>)."

Procedure

1. Ensure planning artifacts exist

Bring the change to a drafted state using the existing generated skills — do not hand-roll the directory:

• No change dir yet → openspec-new-change (or -ff for the fast path).
• Partial artifacts → openspec-continue-change.

Artifacts live at openspec/changes/<change>/: proposal.md, design.md (when the change warrants one), specs/**/spec.md, tasks.md.

2. Doubt-review proposal.md + design.md (trigger: drafted or modified)

Whenever proposal.md or design.md is created or changed in this session, invoke doubt-driven-review on the changed artifact:

• Pass ARTIFACT + CONTRACT only — never the CLAIM, never your reasoning.
  • ARTIFACT = the proposal/design prose (decompose if large per doubt-review).
  • CONTRACT = the requirements/constraints the artifact must satisfy (the specs deltas, the non-goals, the invariants it asserts).
• Surface the cross-model offer — this is an interactive session, so the offer is mandatory (doubt-review Step 3 "always offer, never silently skip").
• Reconcile every finding against the artifact text using doubt-review's precedence (contract-misread → actionable → trade-off → noise). When a finding is valid + actionable, PAUSE: the artifact is corrected before proceeding.

Do not fold scenarios until the doubt cycle reaches a stop condition (trivial findings, 3 cycles, or explicit "ship it").

3. scenario-design → category-routed fold into tasks.md (MANDATORY — never skip)

scenario-design is a required step, not an option. A change never reaches the worktree boundary without a test-plan.md manifest and its automated rows folded into tasks.md. Do not hand-author test tasks, infer scenarios from the proposal, or skip straight to the commit — always drive the tasks from the scenario-design output. Smoke-test-only tasks.md is a planning failure.

Run scenario-design for the change (proposal/design stage → HARD gate; it may ask_user and STOP on a spec gap — that is expected, answer and continue). It writes openspec/changes/<change>/test-plan.md — the manifest, carrying a level + disposition (automated | manual-only) per scenario row. If test-plan.md does not exist after this step, scenario-design did not run — re-invoke it before folding.

Then fold each row into tasks.md:

• automated rows → one vanilla - [ ] task each, routed to its category:

  manifest level	home	check-first (reuse infra)
  L1	packages/*/**/__tests__/*.test.ts (vitest)	sibling *.test.ts
  L2	qa/tests/*.sh | *.ps1	existing qa test for that OS
  L3	tests/e2e/*.spec.ts (docker harness)	existing spec for that surface
  electron	ci-electron.yml / _electron-build.yml	existing electron job
  ci	ci.yml / workflow-level	existing workflow assertion

  Before tasking new infra, scan for an existing test of that type to extend. Each folded test task MUST carry:

  1. a harness-exemplar pointer — the nearest existing spec/test of that category to copy harness glue from (e.g. see tests/e2e/reconnect.spec.ts). Bare "author X.spec.ts" tasks are forbidden — ship-it resolves the exemplar path into the task context it hands apply.
  2. the scenario Triple (input · trigger · observable) as plain text.
  3. a manifest reference as ordinary prose — either (test-plan #<id>) or an inline (test-plan: automated) — so ship-it/ship-change can map it back.

• manual-only rows → a plain manual task tagged (test-plan: manual-only); no test is folded. ship-change defers these post-merge (its manifest-aware defer rule).

Fold-completeness gate (before Step 4): every automated row in test-plan.md MUST map to exactly one folded test task in tasks.md, and every manual-only row MUST map to one tagged manual task. Verify the count matches the manifest — if any scenario row has no corresponding task, the fold is incomplete; finish it before committing. Do not proceed to the boundary with an unfolded manifest.

Parser-safety (load-bearing): tasks.md MUST stay vanilla checkbox format. No custom token, no bracketed tag, no non-standard syntax on a task line — only - [ ] <text> where the manifest reference is ordinary prose. openspec status --json and the generated apply skill parse this file; a stray token could break them. Verify openspec status --change <change> --json reports the same task counts after folding as the plain checkboxes imply.

4. Commit planning artifacts + stop at the worktree boundary

Precondition: test-plan.md exists and the fold-completeness gate passed. Never commit without the manifest — a missing test-plan.md means Step 3 was skipped; go back and run scenario-design.

Commit proposal.md, design.md, specs/**, tasks.md, and test-plan.md to develop. The worktree is spawned from that commit via the existing worktree flow (dashboard "start work" / git worktree add).

Then STOP. plan-proposal does not enter the implementation phase. Report:

Planning complete for <change>. Artifacts committed to develop; worktree ready. Automated scenarios folded to tasks (manifest dispositions in test-plan.md). Next: run ship-it inside the worktree to build + ship. If a design issue surfaces during build, ship-it writes SHIP_IT_BLOCKED.md and hands back here.

Guardrails

• Main session only — refuse and surface if nested (see Hard constraint).
• Never pass the CLAIM to the reviewer; ARTIFACT + CONTRACT only.
• Never fold before reconciling actionable doubt-review findings.
• tasks.md stays vanilla — the manifest (test-plan.md), not a task tag, is the automated-vs-manual source of truth.
• scenario-design is mandatory — no test-plan.md, no commit. Never hand-author test tasks or skip scenario design; the manifest is the sole source of the folded test tasks.
• Fold every manifest row — the boundary is blocked until every automated and manual-only row maps to a task.
• Never author test/app code here — folding writes tasks; ship-it authors the tests. This skill plans; it does not implement.
• Stop at the boundary — do not continue into implementation.

Composed skills

openspec-new-change / -ff / -continue · doubt-driven-review · scenario-design (+ its test-plan.md manifest) · handoff to ship-it.