X Game Plan

Game Plan X (v2)

You are generating a comprehensive, research-backed operational roadmap for achieving a complex goal — a job search, a legal situation, a life change, a marathon, an organizational transformation. This turns strategy into action: specific tasks, realistic timelines, and clarity about what the user must do personally vs. what they can get help with.

The user's goal is: $ARGUMENTS

Core principles (inherited from v1):

• Adapt everything — no fixed phases or categories; research the domain and find what matters for THIS goal.
• Research real stories — tactics from people who actually did it, not generic advice.
• Every task tagged 🧑 HUMAN / 🤖 AI-ASSISTED / ⚡ AUTOMATABLE, with priority and estimated effort.
• Be absurdly specific — "send 5 cold LinkedIn messages to engineering managers on your target list using the Phase 1 template," not "network."
• Each phase gets a "What This Looks Like" box: what you should have, be doing, can skip, and the trigger to move on.
• Plain English; first phase doable THIS WEEK.

New principles (v2):

1. Failure stories are half the research. For every "how people did it" search, run a "how people failed at it" search. The traps go into the plan as explicit warnings on the relevant tasks.
2. The plan checks itself. Each phase ends with a checkpoint gate: what to measure, what result means proceed, and what result means pivot (with the pivot named). Plans that only know how to go forward aren't plans.
3. Tripwires become tasks. If the strategy brief carries tripwires ("revisit decision 3 if X"), each becomes a recurring check-in task in the plan — strategy assumptions get monitored, not forgotten.
4. Dependencies are visible. Tasks that block other tasks say so; the critical path is identifiable.
5. Week One is day-by-day. The gap between "having a plan" and "starting" kills more plans than bad planning does. The first 7 days get a concrete daily schedule.

Reference file (read on demand)

Read references/playbook-template.md (in this skill's directory) right before generating the playbook HTML — the interactive template (clickable checkboxes with localStorage progress, research panel, phase overviews, callout boxes, task cards with effort tags) plus effort-tag/priority/specificity rules live there. Adapt wording: header subtitle "[Goal] — Your complete game plan"; rename the "Product at This Phase" box to "What This Looks Like"; footer references /x-strategize and /x-shape.

PHASE 0 — Read Configuration & Prior Thinking

1. .decisions/profile.json (/whoiam) — adapt language and analogies.
2. .decisions/sources.json (/research-sources) — honor in all research.
3. .decisions/strategy-brief.md (from /x-strategize or /strategize) — if found, the plan executes that strategy: use every decision as context, surface the elevator pitch at the top of the playbook, and harvest the "Assumptions & Tripwires" and "Pre-Mortem" sections — tripwires become recurring check-in tasks (see below), pre-mortem failure modes become warnings on the tasks where they'd bite.
4. .decisions/decisions.json — note any confidence: "tossup" decisions; the plan should include an early task that gathers the information that would settle them.

If no brief exists, read $ARGUMENTS; if too vague, ask: what does success look like, and what's the biggest obstacle?

PHASE 1 — Research How People Actually Do (and Fail at) This

Launch parallel research subagents (one message, multiple Agent calls), each with a distinct angle:

• Success stories — "[goal] how to actually do it step by step", real accounts, realistic timelines
• Failure stories — "[goal] mistakes to avoid", "why I failed at [goal]", what people skip that they shouldn't, where motivation dies
• Domain tactics & numbers — current best approaches, realistic costs/durations, benchmarks ("how many applications per offer", "typical timeline for X")

Each agent returns finding — source — URL lists, honoring sources.json. Fallback: 3-4 inline WebSearches covering at minimum success + failure angles. Synthesize into actionable patterns (what people do first, what takes longest, what kills momentum) and tell the user the most surprising finding.

PHASE 2 — Generate the Game Plan

mkdir -p .playbook, read the playbook template reference, then build:

Phases: 4-6, shaped by THIS goal (career: Clarity → Preparation → Outreach → Interview → Close; fitness: Baseline → Foundation → Build → Push → Maintain; etc.). Each phase gets: Phase Overview (what, why it matters grounded in research, measurable success) and "What This Looks Like" (have / doing / can-skip / move-on trigger).

Tasks: 5-12 per phase. Each: verb-first title · why it matters (research-grounded) · how to do it (2-4 concrete steps) · effort tag · priority · estimated effort · NEW: blocked by note when it depends on another task (reference the task by phase+name; keep it light — only real dependencies) · NEW: ⚠ trap warnings on tasks where failure-story research found a common mistake ("most people send generic messages here — that's why response rates are 2%; personalize the first line").

NEW — Week One, day-by-day: between the intro and Phase 1, a "Your First 7 Days" box: Day 1 through Day 7, each with 1-3 small concrete actions pulled from Phase 1's easiest high-momentum tasks. Someone should be able to start today without reading the rest.

NEW — Checkpoint gates: each phase ends with a visually distinct gate card: Measure: [the 1-2 numbers or facts to check] · Proceed if: [threshold] · Pivot if: [threshold + the named pivot: "fewer than 2 interviews from 40 applications → stop applying cold; switch to the referral-first track and revisit strategy decision 4"]. Gates come from research benchmarks, not invented numbers.

NEW — Tripwire check-ins: every tripwire from the strategy brief becomes a small recurring task ("every 2 weeks: check whether [condition]; if yes, revisit decision N before continuing"), placed in the phase where it's most likely to fire.

Write .playbook/playbook.html, open it.

PHASE 3 — Present and Iterate

"Your game plan is ready — [N] tasks across [N] phases, with checkpoint gates between phases and your first week planned day by day. Click any task to check it off; progress saves in your browser.

Research note: based on how people actually did this — and the [N] most common ways they failed, which are flagged ⚠ on the tasks where they bite.

Want me to: dive deeper into a phase · add tasks to an area · research a specific challenge · generate templates (scripts, checklists, prep docs)?"

Handle follow-ups by editing the playbook HTML in place and re-opening.

IMPORTANT REMINDERS

1. Adapt everything — phases and categories come from the domain research, not a fixed list.
2. Failure research is mandatory — a plan without trap warnings is half a plan.
3. Be absurdly specific — every task actionable right now without asking "but how?"
4. Tag every task; mark real dependencies; keep the critical path visible.
5. Gates between phases — measurable proceed/pivot criteria from research benchmarks. Never invent thresholds; if research gave none, say the gate is a judgment call and name what to weigh.
6. Week One is day-by-day; the first phase is doable this week.
7. Tripwires from the strategy brief become recurring tasks — never silently drop them.
8. Interactive HTML with localStorage progress, per the template reference.
9. Connect the pipeline: /x-strategize (strategy) and /x-shape (detailed design) — and for products, /x-product-plan is the launch-specific sibling.