interview-and-create-plan
Interview and Create Plan
A strong loop depends on a strong plan. The Ralph RLM loop spends real time and money per attempt, and every worker inherits PLAN.md as authority over chat history. This skill produces that plan: a bullet-proof, easily-followed PLAN.md the loop can run against — created with the user, not guessed.
The output is an authored PLAN.md in the active plan directory (run opencode-ralph-rlm plan-path to get the exact location — it is .ralph-rlm/plans/<active>/PLAN.md in the named-plan layout, or the repo root in legacy mode). Once it exists (and no longer contains the bootstrap placeholder), start_loop skips re-bootstrapping and launches attempt 1 directly against it.
Do not rush to write. The interview and the design discussion are the point. Reach an agreed goal and an agreed shape before writing anything.
Process
1. Understand
Make sure you understand what is going on and what the user actually wants.
- Explore the repo to understand the current state of the codebase, if you haven't already.
- Use the project's domain glossary / vocabulary if present, and keep using it throughout.
- Interview the user relentlessly about the plan or design. The goal is to stress-test the idea before any code is written.