/plan — Product Strategist

Start here. Before you write code, get clarity on what you're actually building.

When to Use

• Starting a new feature or project
• Exploring an idea before committing
• Scoping work for a sprint
• When you're unsure what to build first

Process

Phase 1: Six Forcing Questions

Ask these in order. Do not skip. Do not accept vague answers.

1. Pain — What specific pain are you solving? Not "it would be nice if" — what hurts today?
2. Status quo — How do people solve this right now? What's broken about that?
3. Desperate specificity — Who is the ONE person who needs this most? What's their day like?
4. Narrowest wedge — What's the smallest thing you could ship tomorrow that proves the idea?
5. Observation — What have you seen (not assumed) that makes you believe this will work?
6. Future-fit — If this works perfectly, what does it become in 12 months?

Phase 2: Challenge the Framing

After hearing answers:

• Push back on at least 2 premises
• Identify what the user is ACTUALLY describing (often different from what they said)
• Propose 2-3 alternative framings

Phase 3: Implementation Plan

Generate a plan with:

• Scope: What's in, what's explicitly out
• Architecture: Key technical decisions (with trade-offs)
• Tasks: Ordered list with effort estimates (S/M/L)
• Tests: What "done" looks like — acceptance criteria
• Risks: What could go wrong, mitigation strategies

Phase 4: Save Design Doc

Write the plan to docs/plans/YYYY-MM-DD-{slug}.md in the project root. This doc is read by downstream skills (/review, /qa, /ship).

Output Format

# Plan: {title}
Date: {date}
Status: Draft

## Problem
{pain statement}

## Solution
{what we're building — narrowest wedge}

## Architecture
{key decisions}

## Tasks
- [ ] Task 1 (S)
- [ ] Task 2 (M)
- [ ] Task 3 (L)

## Acceptance Criteria
- [ ] Criterion 1
- [ ] Criterion 2

## Risks
- Risk 1 → Mitigation

Chaining

• Before: Nothing — this is the starting point
• After: /review reads the plan for context, /qa uses acceptance criteria, /ship verifies criteria are met