skiphow-plan git:20260930.989655aA

Immutable. This exact content never changes and is served at /api/v1/blob/11841b5775ea3357.

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name: skiphow-plan
description: Prepare an idea or substantial change for implementation with research, a reviewed specification, vertical slices, and an execution prompt. Explicit invocation requests durable planning records; ordinary read-only planning stays read-only. Stop before implementation. If context was compacted while this workflow governed, reopen this file and the SkipHow CTO skill before the next consequential action.
---

# SkipHow plan

Prepare work that another agent can execute without rediscovering settled decisions. Before consequential work, and again after any context compaction, read the [SkipHow CTO kernel](../skiphow/SKILL.md) unless its full text is already in context; a summary is not its text. It remains responsible for technical judgment and owner questions.

Explicit invocation of this skill requests a specification and planning records in the project's authorized tracker. Selecting it automatically for a read-only planning request grants no writes. An explicit read-only constraint takes precedence over the durable default. Keep implementation, commits, and delivery outside this workflow.

Use [product](../skiphow/references/product.md) to recover the intended outcome, current behavior, constraints, exclusions, and acceptance conditions. Investigate before taking genuinely unresolved product choices to the owner. Carry the interview through the questions their answers reveal until no known product choice remains open in the accepted execution scope. Preserve settled answers, keep dependent behavior undecided until its answer arrives, and prepare independent work meanwhile. Missing answers leave incomplete preparation, not an execution-ready plan; later discoveries can still require a decision during execution.

Use [technical design](../skiphow/references/technical-design.md) for consequential choices and build-versus-reuse analysis. Establish what the repository already provides before proposing new logic or dependencies. Research current primary sources where they settle a material uncertainty. Choose engineering mechanisms yourself and record enough rationale for another agent to preserve the decision.

For user-facing work, carry the relevant journey scenarios, design direction, and identified reuse constraints into the specification and tasks that depend on them. Separate accepted product decisions from proposals and engineering judgments. Preserve enough source context for an implementer to understand what must hold and why. Record the resulting decisions and acceptance conditions independently of the specialist capability that helped establish them; an executing agent reassesses the capabilities available on its host while preserving the accepted outcome.

Apply [delegation](../skiphow/references/delegation.md) to substantial independent research and to slicing. The plan's tasks must be dispatchable without further planning, so every task it records for execution is one slice delivering one outcome someone can verify on its own, cut through the layers where the work has them, that a single implementation agent can carry from its record to a verified, reviewable change. A grouping record may collect tasks but is never itself dispatched. Before finalizing, split a task that holds several outcomes or several agents' work, or that leaves its own split for later. Work with no honest vertical slice, such as a wide mechanical change, slices into batches each verifiable on its own. Where ordinary delegation stops at the next verifiable outcome, this workflow sizes every task the accepted scope needs from the inspected workload: the context it needs, the output it produces, its verification, and its integration. Where an earlier result could change a later task, name that result and what it would change so the lead rechecks the task at dispatch. A task's size is a judgment from evidence, not a promise; the executing lead splits one that proves larger.

Write each task for a capable agent that has the repository and its record but not this conversation: the outcome and what would show it true, links to the accepted specification and decisions it must preserve, relevant evidence, what it takes from earlier tasks and leaves to later ones, exclusions, and what it returns. Leave files, names, and steps to the implementer unless an accepted decision fixes them. Show real dependencies, which tasks can proceed in parallel, and where shared writes or integration constrain them. Keep open product decisions explicit, and keep small cohesive work one task. Cover integration, migration, rollback, and operation where the proposed behavior needs them.

Have an independent agent review the specification and every task as it will be published against the request and source evidence using [verification](../skiphow/references/verification.md). Check missing outcomes, conflicting decisions, and verifiable acceptance conditions; for each task, whether it holds one outcome that one agent could finish from its record alone; and across tasks, invented or missing dependencies, overlapping work, parts of the result no task covers, unnecessary implementation prescription while retaining justified contracts and reuse constraints, and whether the planned review and integration workload is itself bounded. Check whether the proposed journey fits its application context and whether consequential product choices have an authoritative basis. Resolve supported findings before finalizing the records. If independent review is unavailable, finish the preparation and report review as unverified.

Use [tracked work](../skiphow/references/tracked-work.md) to reconcile existing records and save the plan when authorized. Use GitHub Issues within the established audience unless the project uses another authorized tracker. Write engineering artifacts in English. If tracking is unavailable or unsafe, return complete issue drafts in the authorized private channel and the specific blocker.

Return the specification and issue links or drafts, material decisions, review evidence, unresolved limits, and whether the scope is ready for execution. For ready scope, provide a short execution prompt naming the accepted records, intended destination, scope, and existing authorization boundaries. The prompt should start execution without repeating the CTO policy or granting new protected actions. Keep unfinished preparation and known human prerequisites explicit; a saved plan is not proof of readiness or permission for a protected action. Stop before implementation.