Planning

What it does

When your agent uses it

• The user asks to create a plan
• Start a research project
• A task requires more than 5 tool calls and needs structured phase tracking to stay focused and avoid goal drift

Example prompts

• “create a plan”
• “track progress”
• “start a research project”
• “/planning”

Workflow steps

6 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Create plan first -- Never start complex work without task_plan.md
2. 2Read before decide -- Re-read the plan before any major decision
3. 3Update after act -- Mark phases complete, log what changed
4. 42-action rule -- After every 2 search/browse operations, save findings to findings.md
5. 5Log all errors -- Every error goes in the plan with attempt number and resolution
6. 6Never repeat failures -- If an action failed, change your approach

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 14680ec. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md (its code samples are bash and markdown).

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

  • github.com

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Planning loads about 724 tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 76 tokens; SKILL.md has 280 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~76

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~724

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from davila7/claude-code-templates at commit 14680ec, republished under its MIT licence (© davila7). 280 words, ~724 tokens.

name

planning

description

Create and manage persistent markdown planning files for structured task execution. Use when the user asks to "create a plan", "track progress", "start a research project", or when a task requires more than 5 tool calls and needs structured phase tracking to stay focused and avoid goal drift.

PLAN_DIR="${AIMAESTRO_PLANNING_DIR:-docs_dev}"
mkdir -p "$PLAN_DIR"

# Task: [Goal]

## Phases
- [ ] Phase 1: Research
- [ ] Phase 2: Design
- [ ] Phase 3: Implement
- [ ] Phase 4: Test

## Decisions
| Decision | Rationale | Date |
|----------|-----------|------|

## Errors Encountered
| Error | Attempt | Resolution |
|-------|---------|------------|

© davila7, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

Just SKILL.md in cli-tool/components/skills/ai-maestro/planning of davila7/claude-code-templates.

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 14680ec