tomevault-io Plan Review: Validate Execution Plans
Purpose
Review and validate execution plans before code changes begin, ensuring plans have clear acceptance criteria, appropriate critic assignments, and realistic scope.
When to Use
- After planner agent creates execution plan
- When user explicitly requests plan review
- Before high-stakes operations (configured in highStakesPatterns)
Validation Criteria
Completeness Checks
✓ Scope defined: Files, operations, and boundaries clear ✓ Success criteria present: At least 3 specific, measurable criteria ✓ Critic assignment: Each criterion mapped to responsible critic ✓ Retry budget set: Escalation path defined ✓ Cost estimate included: Token overhead calculated
Quality Gates
Acceptance criteria must be:
- Specific (not "good code" but "all tests pass, coverage >80%")
- Measurable (binary pass/fail, not subjective)
- Pre-declared (before execution, not emergent)
- Mapped to critics (clear veto authority assignment)
Domain-specific patterns:
- Financial: Must specify precision, rounding method, audit requirements
- Security: Must reference OWASP checklist, auth patterns
- Performance: Must define latency SLAs, memory limits
Review Process
- Parse plan structure - Extract scope, criteria, critics, budget
- Check completeness - Verify all required sections present
- Validate criteria - Ensure specific and measurable
- Verify critic mapping - Each criterion has responsible critic
- Check domain patterns - Apply domain-specific requirements
- Estimate feasibility - Scope appropriate for retry budget
- Present findings - Show issues and recommendations
Example Reviews
Good Plan
EXECUTION PLAN ✓
Scope: Refactor auth to JWT ✓
Files: src/auth/*.ts ✓
SUCCESS CRITERIA: ✓
✓ All 18 existing tests pass (Code Critic validates)
✓ No OWASP Top 10 violations (Security Critic validates)
✓ Token storage uses httpOnly cookies (Security Critic validates)
✓ Token refresh handles 401 (Code Critic validates)
✓ Coverage maintains 85%+ (Code Critic validates)
Critics: code, security ✓
Budget: 6 iterations ✓
Cost: +40% tokens ($0.15) ✓
Plan Needs Improvement
EXECUTION PLAN ❌
Scope: Make the code better ❌ TOO VAGUE
Files: Not specified ❌ MISSING
SUCCESS CRITERIA: ❌
- Code should be high quality ❌ NOT MEASURABLE
- No bugs ❌ NOT SPECIFIC
- Fast performance ❌ NO THRESHOLD
Critics: None assigned ❌
Budget: Not set ❌
Required fixes:
- Define specific scope and files
- Make criteria measurable (e.g., "all tests pass", "latency <200ms")
- Assign critics to each criterion
- Set retry budget
Configuration
Plans automatically reviewed when autoVerify: true in settings.
For manual review, invoke explicitly after planning phase.
Additional Resources
references/acceptance-criteria-patterns.md- Domain-specific criteria templatesreferences/plan-examples.md- Good and bad plan examples
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