--- name: plan-with-the-corpus description: Use when designing an implementation plan, scoping a slice, starting any multi-step task, or before writing significant code — and use it BEFORE the first Edit, not after. Planning is the highest-leverage review point: a bad plan line becomes hundreds of bad code lines. --- # Plan with the corpus Review leverage runs research > plan > code. Lessons that arrive while you are editing can only save the line in front of you; lessons pulled while PLANNING save the whole approach. So pull first, plan small, review the plan, then code. ## 1. Pull before you plan ``` py agent_cli.py boot --task "" # ranked against the task py agent_cli.py recall "" # targeted corpus search ``` Check for: prior attempts at this exact thing, anti-patterns on the components you'll touch, open blockers/notes that change the premise. (Plan-time recall also arrives automatically on your prompt when the hook is wired — treat it as a starting set, not the whole corpus.) ## 2. Plan in verifiable steps - Steps sized minutes-not-hours, each with its own check (a test, a command, a render). - **No placeholders.** "TBD", "similar to step 3", "handle errors properly" are plan failures — resolve them now, while it's cheap. - State contraindications: what would make this plan WRONG ("don't do this if X"). - Name the verification for the whole slice up front (which suite, which dogfood command). ## 3. Review the plan before the code Read the plan adversarially once: which step hides the risk? which assumption is untested? A minute here outweighs a review cycle later. For irreversible or outward-facing steps, confirm with the human first. ## 4. Execution hygiene - Keep context lean: hand file PATHS to subagents, never paste bodies ("everything you paste stays resident for the rest of the session"). - Fresh context per phase where natural (research → plan → implement), carrying only the distilled artifact forward. - When a step's assumption breaks, go back to the plan — don't improvise the architecture mid-edit (see root-cause-before-fixes for the 3-strikes rule). ## 5. Close the loop The plan's surprises are lessons: what the corpus SHOULD have told you before you started is exactly what you record when you finish (`learn` with a trigger-phrased recommendation), so the next plan starts smarter than this one did.