# Planning Clarification > Clarify unsettled requests, probe assumptions and design choices, and converge on evidence-backed execution briefs or fresh-context prompts. Use when goals, constraints, or material decisions need working through before execution. - Skill: `yunchengliu/planning-clarification` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files) - Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add yunchengliu/planning-clarification` - Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/yunchengliu/planning-clarification/raw - Safety review: pending - Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex - Category: Coding & Dev Tools - Author: YunchengLiu (https://skillmd.com/u/yunchengliu) - Updated: 2026-09-22 - Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/yunchengliu/planning-clarification --- # Planning Clarification Turn an unsettled request into the smallest complete plan that another person or agent can execute. Work from the desired result and available evidence, actively test assumptions, and resolve the decisions that determine the route. Express the settled requirements and reasoning directly, in clear, idiomatic language suited to the reader. Keep interview history out of the result. Use the depth the task needs. A clear local request may need only a short brief; a difficult design may need several rounds of investigation and questioning. Preserve the user's choices, project instructions, and authorization already given when shaping the next work. ## Ground The Problem Identify the target project from the request. Read the supplied material and the smallest relevant set of local artifacts before asking questions they can answer. Inspect incrementally: current behavior, callers, tests, manifests, notes, or data only where they inform this task. Handle ordinary lookup and triage directly. Reason from first principles within the given frame: - Establish the requested outcome, who needs it, and the observable signal that would show success. Separate this need from a suggested implementation unless the user has already chosen that implementation. - Identify the stated domain, scale, constraints, and commitments. Distinguish confirmed facts, evidence-based inferences, working assumptions, and unknowns; do not invent requirements to fill gaps. - For development or refactoring, locate the owning execution path and its integration boundary. Establish what the current path provides, where its guarantees are established, who consumes them, and what is actually missing before decomposing implementation work. If an owner or behavior is unknown, locating or deciding it is the next step. A settled design is an input. Reopen a settled point only when concrete evidence shows a conflict with the requested behavior or current project, and keep the challenge confined to that conflict. ## Investigate The Design Route If a missing requirement determines which approaches are relevant, resolve that decision before researching branches it may rule out. For non-local, non-obvious, or algorithmically difficult work, deliberately try a credible alternative representation, decomposition, or execution route. A state machine, ownership model, dataflow representation, geometric operation, or table of rules may simplify the problem; these are examples, not a menu to work through. For development, use an alternative only when it matches the required semantics and reduces total implementation, testing, and maintenance complexity compared with the direct design. If it does not fit, state the mismatch and return to the simplest direct approach. For each material representation, abstraction, or algorithm choice, classify the domain and actively study relevant mature implementations and primary sources before settling the route. Inspect the concrete algorithm as well as the surrounding design. For example, compiler work may benefit from LLVM's implementation and tests; runtime work from CPython or Lua; geometry from CGAL. Extract the invariant, ownership rule, algorithmic idea, or tradeoff and explain why it fits, needs adaptation, or fails to fit this task's semantics and scale. Prefer an established approach that directly covers the requirement over a parallel local model. Do not import an architecture because it is prominent or turn an obvious local change into a research exercise. Also verify external facts when the plan depends on current capabilities, version-sensitive behavior, standards, regulations, or precise sourced claims. Prefer official documentation, project code and tests, standards, and primary papers. Distinguish source findings from your synthesis. If sources conflict, are unavailable, or browsing is forbidden, state the affected uncertainty and what could resolve it instead of presenting an unverified answer as settled. ## Probe The Decisions When clarification is still needed, briefly summarize the current understanding before asking questions so the user can correct the frame. Actively identify assumptions whose failure would change the outcome, scope, acceptance, ownership, dependencies, or another costly decision. Test them against the evidence and a concrete case: what requires this constraint, what happens at the relevant boundary, or whether the proposed mechanism solves the stated problem. Raise practical contradictions directly; avoid hypothetical future requirements and exhaustive risk surveys. Follow decision dependencies. Settle an upstream choice before asking about details that depend on it, then trace the answer into the affected parts of the plan. Ask one coherent decision at a time, or a few independent questions that can be answered together. Continue through consequential branches until the shared model is clear. For each question, explain briefly why the answer changes the plan and give a reasoned recommendation when the evidence supports one. Compare only credible options with materially different consequences; say when the available facts do not support a preference. Present an informed tradeoff for the user to choose; handle investigation and local mechanical choices yourself. For example, "move exports into the background" may leave unclear whether an export must survive application exit. Inspect the existing export path first. If that guarantee is still undecided and changes ownership or persistence, settle it before asking about job storage or retry policy. Recommend an answer from the actual workflow and explain its consequence; do not assume durability merely because the request uses the word "background". After an answer, update the working plan, revisit only dependent decisions, and inspect any new evidence it calls for. Carry settled facts and relevant process choices forward. When the user mainly wants a result, concentrate on missing inputs, acceptance, and boundaries that affect delivery. ## Remove Unnecessary Structure As material choices arise, after a design change, and before finalizing, compare the proposal with the existing path and the simplest complete alternative. Carry forward supported decisions; revisit only what new facts or an unresolved concern could change. Keep routine comparisons brief. For each added phase, abstraction, fallback, dependency, document, or validation step, ask what current requirement, invariant, execution ambiguity, or distinct acceptance evidence would be lost if it were removed. Use the smaller form when it provides the same result; remove additions with no such justification. Check that simplification preserves the complete requested behavior and real integration points. Keep guarantees, supported inputs, hardening, and execution authority within the agreed scope. Retain the explanation, examples, and model an executor needs to understand and carry out the plan. ## Converge On The Brief Stop questioning when the material decisions are settled and remaining details do not change the agreed route. Produce a compact brief in top-down order: outcome and scope; recommended approach and decisive evidence; affected work and its dependencies; deliverable and acceptance. Carry the owning path, established guarantees, and remaining responsibilities needed to guide local implementation into that brief. Include assumptions, limits, or unresolved choices only where they still matter. Do not emit empty sections or a transcript of rejected proposals. For a material design choice, include any relevant alternative considered, the mature implementations or primary sources consulted, and the extracted idea with why it is reused, adapted, limited, or rejected. Omit this design evidence only when no material design choice remains. If a critical choice remains unresolved after inspection and research, ask the user and identify what depends on the answer. A provisional brief may describe independent work and explicit assumptions, but must not disguise a blocked decision as an executable instruction. When shaping a human brief, an agent execution brief, or a prompt for a fresh session, use [output-modes.md](references/output-modes.md). Preserve settled requirements while leaving unverified project details for the executor to confirm. Match the requested medium and amount of detail.