Code Planning

Methodology for structuring high-quality implementation plans. This skill governs how to plan well — evaluating trade-offs, decomposing work, managing scope, and identifying risks. A good plan eliminates ambiguity before code is written.

Scope boundary: This skill covers plan quality — what makes a plan good. For related concerns:

• Pre-implementation requirements (EARS notation, acceptance criteria) → Requirements skill (/requirements)
• Planning process, execution discipline, and verification → task lifecycle rule (claude/rules/task-lifecycle.md)
• Source evaluation for research that informs plans → Code Research skill (/code-research)
• Domain-specific decisions are delegated to the relevant skill (see Trade-off Evaluation below)

1. Planning Philosophy

A plan is a contract between research and implementation. It translates findings into actionable tasks with clear verification criteria.

Quality dimensions — evaluate every plan against these, in priority order: