# Review Plan > Stress-test a plan before acting on it. Finds blind spots, missing steps, and wishful thinking, then gives a clear verdict — APPROVE, or REVISE with a fixed-up plan. Substantive plans get a council of critics by default; `quick` or `single-pass` runs one fast review instead. Use right after plan mode, or on any plan file. Use when this capability is needed. - Skill: `tomevault-io/review-plan` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 2 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add tomevault-io/review-plan` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/tomevault-io/review-plan/raw - Safety review: pending (external: skill-scanner PASS, skillspector PASS) - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: tomevault-io (https://skillmd.com/u/tomevault-io) - Updated: 2026-09-17 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/tomevault-io/review-plan --- # /review-plan — Stress-Test a Plan Read the plan, critique it hard, deliver a verdict. For plans of any substance the default is a small council of independent critics with a separate synthesis — three reviewers with different lenses catch more than one. `quick` or `single-pass` opts down to a single fresh-context review. ## Step 1 — Find and read the plan In priority order: 1. **Explicit file** — the `file:path` argument. If the path doesn't exist: "File not found: [path]. Check the path and try again." 2. **Plan-mode file** — the most recent file in `~/.claude/plans/` (Glob `~/.claude/plans/*.md`), when the user just finished plan mode. 3. **The conversation** — a plan developed or pasted in this session. If no plan is found anywhere, reply: "No plan found. Run `/review-plan` right after plan mode, or `/review-plan file:path/to/plan.md`." and stop. If the plan is under ~50 words, warn — "This plan is very brief; the review may be limited." — then proceed. ## Step 2 — Pick the review path and the reviewer - **Council (default).** Any plan where a missed flaw would cost real time, money, or credibility: implementation plans, migrations, research designs, proposals, workflow changes. - **Single-pass.** Only when the user says `quick` or `single-pass`, or the plan is short and low-stakes (a simple to-do sequence). Assign an expert role for the critique — infer from the plan's content; the user's `role:"..."` always wins: | The plan is about | Reviewer role | |-------------------|---------------| | Software, automation, AI tools | AI engineering specialist | | Grants, proposals, funders | Research funding strategist | | Papers, studies, data analysis | Research methodology specialist | | Project management, workflows, operations | Operations specialist | | Anything else | Strategic planning specialist | Announce: "**Reviewing as:** meticulous [role]. (Say `role:\"...\"` to override.)" ## Step 3 — Research best practices (skip when `quick`) Privacy check before any search: web search sends search terms outside Claude. If the plan includes confidential records, personal contact details, research-participant or human-subjects material, unpublished sensitive work, private financial/legal/medical/school details, or anything the user would not paste into a public website, skip web search and say: "I am skipping web search because the plan appears sensitive; reviewing from the local plan and general domain knowledge." If the plan is safe, run two web searches: `"[the plan's main approach] best practices"` and `"[the plan's domain] common pitfalls"`. Distill 3–5 principles that bear on THIS plan — they feed the critique. If web search is unavailable, continue and note: "Web research unavailable; reviewing from domain knowledge." ## Step 4 — Run the critique ### Council path (default) Follow the bundled council skill — `${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/council/SKILL.md` — with: - **Panel:** the plan panel (skeptic, pre-mortem, completeness-checker). **Type:** plan. - **Critic input:** the full plan text plus the best-practice principles from Step 3. - **`--peer codex|gemini`:** pass it through if the user set it. The council skill checks whether that engine is actually available, asks for explicit send confirmation, and falls back to all-Claude with a friendly note if not. **Privacy check first:** a peer review sends the full plan to another AI service — if the plan contains confidential, personal, or research-participant material, don't pass `--peer`; tell the user why and run all-Claude. The council skill owns the persona-file check, the parallel dispatch, and the mandatory separate synthesis. Don't re-implement those here. ### Single-pass path (`quick` / `single-pass` / trivial plan only) Dispatch ONE Task call, `subagent_type: general-purpose` — a fresh context avoids grading your own homework — with this prompt: ``` You are a meticulous [role]. Find what's missing, what will break, and what's wishful thinking. Do not rationalize or hedge. PLAN TO REVIEW: [full plan text] BEST PRACTICES CONTEXT: [principles from Step 3, or "none — quick mode"] Review against 6 dimensions: 1. PRE-MORTEM — it's 3 months later and this failed. Top 3 causes? 2. COMPLETENESS — what's missing that a domain expert would expect? 3. FEASIBILITY — which steps depend on unconfirmed resources, approvals, or data? 4. BEST-PRACTICE FIT — where does the plan deviate, and is the deviation justified? 5. SEQUENCING — hidden blockers? Would reordering reduce risk? 6. SPECIFICITY — could someone unfamiliar execute each step? Flag hand-waves ("figure out", "as needed") and missing success criteria. Classify each finding: Red (will likely cause failure or major rework), Yellow (risky but survivable), Green (minor). End with VERDICT: APPROVE | REVISE — [one-line reason] ``` ## Step 5 — Present the review ``` ════════════════════════════════════════ PLAN REVIEW — [plan title] ════════════════════════════════════════ Reviewing as: meticulous [role] · Source: [file / plan mode / conversation] STRENGTHS 1. [what the plan gets right — be specific] WEAKNESSES & GAPS 🔴 [issue] → Fix: [specific change] 🟡 [issue] → Fix: [specific change] 🟢 [issue] → Fix: [specific change] VERDICT ✅ APPROVE — [reason] or 🔄 REVISE — [reason] + revised plan below ``` When the council ran: take the verdict, blockers, and patches from the synthesis output; include the per-critic one-line verdicts; put the raw critiques in a `
` block at the bottom. If the verdict is REVISE, draft the revised plan yourself from the blockers and patches, marking changed sections `[CHANGED]` and additions `[NEW]`. ## Step 6 — Iterate Ask: "Apply these revisions, or give me feedback to refine further?" - **Accept** → apply the revisions to the plan file (if file-based) or present the final version. - **Feedback** → loop back to Step 4 once, with the user's notes added to the critic input. - After 2 review cycles: "This plan has been reviewed [N] times — further rounds hit diminishing returns. Consider running it and iterating in practice." ## Examples ``` /review-plan ← right after plan mode /review-plan file:docs/migration-plan.md /review-plan quick /review-plan single-pass role:"clinical trial design specialist" /review-plan --peer codex ``` --- > Source: [chrisblattman/claudeblattman](https://github.com/chrisblattman/claudeblattman) — distributed by [TomeVault](https://tomevault.io).