Complexity Gate — Plan Before You Act

What this addresses

Planning and organization difficulty: for many neurodivergent developers, complex multi-part tasks can trigger one of two failure modes — paralysis (not knowing where to start) or premature execution (jumping to implementation before understanding the full scope, then having to restart).

Both are costly. The complexity gate catches requests that warrant a plan before any tool call.

When to apply

Apply this skill when a user request contains two or more of the following signals:

Scope signals:

• Mentions multiple files, components, or services
• Uses words like "refactor", "redesign", "rewrite", "migrate", "overhaul"
• References schema changes, database migrations, or API changes
• Implies work across multiple abstraction layers (frontend + backend + database)