plan

Plan: Design Before Coding

Phase 2 of the Explore → Plan → Implement → Verify workflow. From Anthropic: "Planning is most useful for uncertain approach, changes across many files, or unfamiliar code."

Process

Based on the exploration (or direct knowledge), create a plan:

1. Problem Statement: One sentence. What are we solving?
2. Approach: How will we solve it? (Brief — 2-3 sentences max)
3. Changes: Exact list of files to modify and what changes in each
4. Order: Which changes come first? Dependencies between steps?
5. Risks: What could go wrong? Where might we need to adjust?
6. Verification: How do we prove this works? (tests, build, manual check)

Output

Write the plan to .claude/plans/{task-name}.md:

# Plan: {task-name}

## Problem
{one sentence}

## Approach
{2-3 sentences}

## Changes
1. `path/to/file.ext` — {what changes}
2. `path/to/other.ext` — {what changes}

## Risks
- {risk 1}
- {risk 2}

## Verification
{how to verify — specific command or check}

After writing the plan:

• Tell the user they can edit it with Ctrl+G
• Ask: "Ready to implement, or want to adjust the plan?"

Skip planning for tasks where you can describe the diff in one sentence.