Gsd Plan Phase

Default flow: Research (if needed) → Plan → Verify → Done

Orchestrator role: Parse arguments, validate phase, research domain (unless skipped or exists), spawn gsd-planner agent, verify plans with gsd-plan-checker, iterate until plans pass or max iterations reached, present results.

Why subagents: Research and planning burn context fast. Verification uses fresh context. User sees the flow between agents in main context.

Flags:

• --research — Force re-research even if RESEARCH.md exists
• --skip-research — Skip research entirely, go straight to planning
• --gaps — Gap closure mode (reads VERIFICATION.md, skips research)
• --skip-verify — Skip planner → checker verification loop

Normalize phase input in step 2 before any directory lookups.

1. Validate Environment

ls .planning/ 2>/dev/null

If not found: Error - user should run /gsd-new-project first.

2. Parse and Normalize Arguments

Extract from $ARGUMENTS:

• Phase number (integer or decimal like 2.1)
• --research flag to force re-research
• --skip-research flag to skip research
• --gaps flag for gap closure mode
• --skip-verify flag to bypass verification loop

If no phase number: Detect next unplanned phase from roadmap.

Normalize phase to zero-padded format:

# Normalize phase number (8 → 08, but preserve decimals like 2.1 → 02.1)
if [[ "$PHASE" =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then
  PHASE=$(printf "%02d" "$PHASE")
elif [[ "$PHASE" =~ ^([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)$ ]]; then
  PHASE=$(printf "%02d.%s" "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}" "${BASH_REMATCH[2]}")
fi

Check for existing research and plans:

ls .planning/phases/${PHASE}-*/*-RESEARCH.md 2>/dev/null
ls .planning/phases/${PHASE}-*/*-PLAN.md 2>/dev/null

3. Validate Phase

grep -A5 "Phase ${PHASE}:" .planning/ROADMAP.md 2>/dev/null

If not found: Error with available phases. If found: Extract phase number, name, description.

4. Ensure Phase Directory Exists

# PHASE is already normalized (08, 02.1, etc.) from step 2
PHASE_DIR=$(ls -d .planning/phases/${PHASE}-* 2>/dev/null | head -1)
if [ -z "$PHASE_DIR" ]; then
  # Create phase directory from roadmap name
  PHASE_NAME=$(grep "Phase ${PHASE}:" .planning/ROADMAP.md | sed 's/.*Phase [0-9]*: //' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr ' ' '-')
  mkdir -p ".planning/phases/${PHASE}-${PHASE_NAME}"
  PHASE_DIR=".planning/phases/${PHASE}-${PHASE_NAME}"
fi

5. Handle Research

If --gaps flag: Skip research (gap closure uses VERIFICATION.md instead).

If --skip-research flag: Skip to step 6.

Otherwise:

Check for existing research:

ls "${PHASE_DIR}"/*-RESEARCH.md 2>/dev/null

If RESEARCH.md exists AND --research flag NOT set:

• Display: Using existing research: ${PHASE_DIR}/${PHASE}-RESEARCH.md
• Skip to step 6

If RESEARCH.md missing OR --research flag set:

Display stage banner:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 GSD ► RESEARCHING PHASE {X}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

◆ Spawning researcher...

Proceed to spawn researcher

Spawn gsd-phase-researcher

Gather context for research prompt:

# Get phase description from roadmap
PHASE_DESC=$(grep -A3 "Phase ${PHASE}:" .planning/ROADMAP.md)

# Get requirements if they exist
REQUIREMENTS=$(cat .planning/REQUIREMENTS.md 2>/dev/null | grep -A100 "## Requirements" | head -50)

# Get prior decisions from STATE.md
DECISIONS=$(grep -A20 "### Decisions Made" .planning/STATE.md 2>/dev/null)

# Get phase context if exists
PHASE_CONTEXT=$(cat "${PHASE_DIR}/${PHASE}-CONTEXT.md" 2>/dev/null)

Fill research prompt and spawn:

<objective>
Research how to implement Phase {phase_number}: {phase_name}

Answer: "What do I need to know to PLAN this phase well?"
</objective>

<context>
**Phase description:**
{phase_description}

**Requirements (if any):**
{requirements}

**Prior decisions:**
{decisions}

**Phase context (if any):**
{phase_context}
</context>

<output>
Write research findings to: {phase_dir}/{phase}-RESEARCH.md
</output>

Task(
  prompt=research_prompt,
  subagent_type="gsd-phase-researcher",
  description="Research Phase {phase}"
)

Handle Researcher Return

## RESEARCH COMPLETE:

• Display: Research complete. Proceeding to planning...
• Continue to step 6

## RESEARCH BLOCKED:

• Display blocker information
• Offer: 1) Provide more context, 2) Skip research and plan anyway, 3) Abort
• Wait for user response

6. Check Existing Plans

ls "${PHASE_DIR}"/*-PLAN.md 2>/dev/null

If exists: Offer: 1) Continue planning (add more plans), 2) View existing, 3) Replan from scratch. Wait for response.

7. Gather Context Paths

Identify context files for the planner agent:

# Required
STATE=.planning/STATE.md
ROADMAP=.planning/ROADMAP.md
REQUIREMENTS=.planning/REQUIREMENTS.md

# Optional (created by earlier steps or commands)
CONTEXT="${PHASE_DIR}/${PHASE}-CONTEXT.md"
RESEARCH="${PHASE_DIR}/${PHASE}-RESEARCH.md"
VERIFICATION="${PHASE_DIR}/${PHASE}-VERIFICATION.md"
UAT="${PHASE_DIR}/${PHASE}-UAT.md"

8. Spawn gsd-planner Agent

Display stage banner:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 GSD ► PLANNING PHASE {X}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

◆ Spawning planner...

Fill prompt and spawn:

<planning_context>

**Phase:** {phase_number}
**Mode:** {standard | gap_closure}

**Project State:**
@.planning/STATE.md

**Roadmap:**
@.planning/ROADMAP.md

**Requirements (if exists):**
@.planning/REQUIREMENTS.md

**Phase Context (if exists):**
@.planning/phases/{phase_dir}/{phase}-CONTEXT.md

**Research (if exists):**
@.planning/phases/{phase_dir}/{phase}-RESEARCH.md

**Gap Closure (if --gaps mode):**
@.planning/phases/{phase_dir}/{phase}-VERIFICATION.md
@.planning/phases/{phase_dir}/{phase}-UAT.md

</planning_context>

<downstream_consumer>
Output consumed by /gsd-execute-phase
Plans must be executable prompts with:

- Frontmatter (wave, depends_on, files_modified, autonomous)
- Tasks in XML format
- Verification criteria
- must_haves for goal-backward verification
</downstream_consumer>

<quality_gate>
Before returning PLANNING COMPLETE:

- [ ] PLAN.md files created in phase directory
- [ ] Each plan has valid frontmatter
- [ ] Tasks are specific and actionable
- [ ] Dependencies correctly identified
- [ ] Waves assigned for parallel execution
- [ ] must_haves derived from phase goal
</quality_gate>

Task(
  prompt=filled_prompt,
  subagent_type="gsd-planner",
  description="Plan Phase {phase}"
)

9. Handle Planner Return

Parse planner output:

## PLANNING COMPLETE:

• Display: Planner created {N} plan(s). Files on disk.
• If --skip-verify: Skip to step 13
• Otherwise: Proceed to step 10

## CHECKPOINT REACHED:

• Present to user, get response, spawn continuation (see step 12)

## PLANNING INCONCLUSIVE:

• Show what was attempted
• Offer: Add context, Retry, Manual
• Wait for user response

10. Spawn gsd-plan-checker Agent

Display:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 GSD ► VERIFYING PLANS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

◆ Spawning plan checker...

Fill checker prompt and spawn:

<verification_context>

**Phase:** {phase_number}
**Phase Goal:** {goal from ROADMAP}

**Plans to verify:**
@.planning/phases/{phase_dir}/*-PLAN.md

**Requirements (if exists):**
@.planning/REQUIREMENTS.md

</verification_context>

<expected_output>
Return one of:
- ## VERIFICATION PASSED — all checks pass
- ## ISSUES FOUND — structured issue list
</expected_output>

Task(
  prompt=checker_prompt,
  subagent_type="gsd-plan-checker",
  description="Verify Phase {phase} plans"
)

11. Handle Checker Return

If ## VERIFICATION PASSED:

• Display: Plans verified. Ready for execution.
• Proceed to step 13

If ## ISSUES FOUND:

• Display: Checker found issues:
• List issues from checker output
• Check iteration count
• Proceed to step 12

12. Revision Loop (Max 3 Iterations)

Track: iteration_count (starts at 1 after initial plan + check)

If iteration_count < 3:

Display: Sending back to planner for revision... (iteration {N}/3)

Spawn gsd-planner with revision prompt:

<revision_context>

**Phase:** {phase_number}
**Mode:** revision

**Existing plans:**
@.planning/phases/{phase_dir}/*-PLAN.md

**Checker issues:**
{structured_issues_from_checker}

</revision_context>

<instructions>
Read existing PLAN.md files. Make targeted updates to address checker issues.
Do NOT replan from scratch unless issues are fundamental.
Return what changed.
</instructions>

Task(
  prompt=revision_prompt,
  subagent_type="gsd-planner",
  description="Revise Phase {phase} plans"
)

• After planner returns → spawn checker again (step 10)
• Increment iteration_count

If iteration_count >= 3:

Display: Max iterations reached. {N} issues remain:

• List remaining issues

Offer options:

1. Force proceed (execute despite issues)
2. Provide guidance (user gives direction, retry)
3. Abandon (exit planning)

Wait for user response.

13. Present Final Status

Route to <offer_next>.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ GSD ► PHASE {X} PLANNED ✓ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Phase {X}: {Name} — {N} plan(s) in {M} wave(s)

Research: {Completed | Used existing | Skipped} Verification: {Passed | Passed with override | Skipped}

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

▶ Next Up

Execute Phase {X} — run all {N} plans

/gsd-execute-phase {X}

/clear first → fresh context window

───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Also available:

• cat .planning/phases/{phase-dir}/*-PLAN.md — review plans
• /gsd-plan-phase {X} --research — re-research first

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