Plan Review

Plan Review: Convergence-oriented fresh-eyes review

You are reviewing a plan that was written in a prior session. You do NOT have the session context the author had while writing it. That context-gap is the single biggest source of bad reviews — you flag "X isn't addressed" when X was deliberately scoped out two rounds ago, the user explains, and the round produces no improvement.

Your job is to produce a sharp, cheap, convergent review that the user can act on in one pass — and to append a short record of this review to the plan itself, so future reviewers can see what's already been said.

When to use this skill

• Gating a saved plan before plan-next starts executing it — typically once, in a fresh session.
• "Review the plan" / "sanity-check this plan" / a second opinion after major plan revisions.

When NOT to use this skill

• Reviewing code, diffs, or PRs — this reviews plan files; use a code-review flow for code.
• An unsaved, in-chat draft — persist it first (plan-save); the review appends its record to the file.
• Expecting fixes — this skill reports a verdict; editing the plan stays with the author.

Steps

1. Find the plan file. If an argument was provided, use that path. Otherwise, search the current project directory for plan files (matching *plan*.md, *PLAN*.md, or markdown in plans/). If exactly one is found and it's obviously the active plan, use it. If multiple, ask the user via AskUserQuestion, sorted by last-modified.

2. Read the entire plan file, including any ## Reviews section at the bottom.

3. Check prior reviews. If a ## Reviews section exists, read every entry. Two purposes:

   • Avoid repeating yourself. If a prior review already raised a concern and it was resolved (or explicitly scoped out), do not raise it again.
   • Calibrate strictness. Count the entries. Apply the scaling in Rules → Round-N discipline.

4. Produce the review in the output format below. Nothing else — no preamble, no recap of the plan, no "here's what I read."

5. Append a record of this review to the plan file (see Appending to the Reviews section).

6. Stop. Do not offer to make edits to the plan body. Do not continue into execution. The review and its record are the deliverables.

Output format

Exactly this structure, in this order:

**Verdict:** execute | don't execute

**Blockers:** [max 2, or "none"]
- [sharp, specific, cites plan section]

**Questions:** [max 2, or "none"]
- [genuine "I don't understand" items, phrased as questions]

That is the entire output to the user. No additional sections. No polish list. No "minor suggestions." If you have nothing for a section, write "none" and move on.

Appending to the Reviews section

After producing the review output above, append a short paragraph to the plan file under a ## Reviews heading at the bottom. If the section doesn't exist, create it.

Format per entry:

### Review N — YYYY-MM-DD

[One short paragraph, 2-4 sentences. State the verdict. If blockers or
questions were raised, summarize them in one clause each. If none, say so.]

• Use today's date from the conversation context (check the system reminder for currentDate).
• Number entries sequentially — if there are already 3 reviews, this is Review 4.
• Keep each entry short on purpose. The Reviews section length is itself a signal — if it grows long, the user should question whether further review is still productive. Fat paragraphs defeat that signal.
• Do not copy the full verdict/blockers/questions block into the Reviews section. Summarize.

Rules

What to flag

Only flag things visible from the plan text itself:

• Internal contradictions — phase 3 says X, phase 5 assumes NOT-X.
• Load-bearing ambiguity — "TBD" / "implementation detail" on a gating decision that downstream phases depend on.
• Undefined load-bearing terms — a term used as if defined that has no definition in the plan or in cited references.
• Phase-gate mismatch — a phase's gate condition can't actually be checked given the phase's scope.

What NOT to flag

• "X isn't addressed." If X isn't in the plan, it was almost certainly scoped out deliberately. Convert this to a Question ("Is X deliberately out of scope?") instead — or, if the Reviews section shows this has been discussed before, don't raise it at all.
• Polish, wording, "consider adding," section-reordering. These are never blockers and don't belong in the output.
• Hypothetical edge cases not in the current execution path.
• "You might want to verify..." — if it's important enough to verify, it's either a blocker or a question. If it's neither, cut it.
• Anything the Reviews section shows was already raised. If prior review #2 asked about X and the plan wasn't changed, the user decided X is fine. Don't re-raise.

Blocker vs. Question

Your default tempted-to-flag item is probably a Question, not a Blocker. Test:

• Blocker: "Executing this plan as written will produce a wrong / broken / incomplete result because ______." You can complete that sentence confidently from the plan text alone.
• Question: "I think there might be a problem with X, but it might also be deliberate and I don't have the context." → Question.

If you can't confidently complete the Blocker sentence, it's a Question. If the Question appears in a prior review, it's nothing — drop it.

Round-N discipline

First, separate your concern into one of two classes:

• Text-visible concern. Something wrong in the plan text itself: an internal contradiction (phase 3 says X, phase 7 assumes NOT-X), a load-bearing TBD, an undefined load-bearing term, a phase gate that can't actually check what it claims. These are caught by reading, not by guessing at coverage.
• Gap concern. "X isn't addressed" / "I'd expect to see Y" / "what about Z?" You're inferring that something should be in the plan and isn't. This class is where review variance lives — different fresh-eyes reads produce different imagined gaps.

Round-N discipline applies only to gap concerns. Text-visible concerns stay full-weight at every round — a real contradiction on review 10 is still a real contradiction.

Count entries in the ## Reviews section and apply to gap concerns:

• Reviews 0–1: normal weight. Gap concerns are fair game; fresh-eyes is most valuable here.
• Reviews 2–4: prefer converting gap concerns to Questions rather than Blockers. The author has had more context than you on each prior round; if a gap survived previous reviews, it's probably deliberate.
• Reviews 5+: default to not raising gap concerns at all. If your only material is gap concerns on review 6+, the honest verdict is "execute / none / none." Text-visible concerns are still raisable — but be sure it's actually text-visible, not a gap dressed up as one.

When in doubt, it's a Question

The hardest call in this skill is "is this a real issue or am I navel-gazing?" You won't always classify correctly. That's fine — the output format has a built-in safety valve:

• Questions are cheap. One sentence to answer, no execution halt, no re-plan.
• Blockers are expensive. They stop execution and demand fixes.

So when you can't tell whether something is real: route it to Questions, not Blockers. Cost-asymmetrically, you'd rather ask a dumb question than halt execution on a non-issue. If the user answers the Question and it turns out to be nothing, no harm — the Reviews section records that it was asked, so future reviewers won't re-ask.

Cap discipline

Max 2 blockers. Max 2 questions. Hard cap. If you have more candidates, pick the two most important of each and drop the rest. The cap forces prioritization — three is always findable, two requires actual judgment.

Verdict discipline

The verdict is committal. If you'd execute the plan as-is, say "execute" and mean it. Don't say "execute" and then list 4 blockers — pick one or the other.

• execute = you would start Phase 0/1 right now as written, no further edits needed.
• don't execute = at least one blocker needs resolving first.

If blockers is "none" and questions is "none" — verdict is execute. Period.

Format discipline

• No preamble ("I've reviewed the plan...").
• No summary of what the plan does.
• No "overall, the plan is solid" framing.
• No closing offer to make edits.
• Just the three-section output to the user, then the append to the plan file. Then stop.