rl-plan

name	rl-plan
description	Turn a life-harness goal into concrete, doable, timed actions and write them down as the goal's action plan, consistent with the user's philosophy. Use when the user runs /rl-plan, asks how to actually reach a goal, wants to plan or break down a goal into steps, or names an existing action plan to refine. Reads goals/ and philosophy/; writes one action file per goal to actions/open/. The plan is later observed against by rl-review.
metadata	{"loop":"life-harness","step":"3-plan"}

rl-plan — agree on concrete, doable, timed steps

A goal states what "accomplished" means; an action plan states how the user gets there — steps that are doable and timed, each with a checkable outcome. This is where the AI and human agree on something specific to actually do and put it on record; rl-review later reads it back and logs what the evidence shows happened against each step. Your job is not an impressive-looking plan — it is one the user will actually do, because a review can only be honest about steps that were real commitments.

There is one action file per goal, sharing the goal's slug: goals/open/<slug>.md ↔ actions/open/<slug>.md.

Input

Whatever the user typed after /rl-plan is a seed, not a strict argument: a goal to plan (or re-plan), an existing plan to refine, or nothing → scan goals/open/ for goals with no/weak/stale plan and ask which to plan.

Steps

1. Locate the workspace (see rl-init conventions); if none is found, tell the user to run /rl-init and stop.

2. Load the goal and the lens. Read the target goal under goals/open/ — its success criteria and target especially — and all of philosophy/. If an action file already exists, read it so you refine rather than duplicate. If there's no matching goal, offer to create one with /rl-goal first, and stop.

3. Draw out doable, timed steps — with the user. Work out the concrete moves that satisfy the goal's criteria. Every step is doable (a real action, not an aspiration — break down anything too big), timed (explicit when / how long / by when — "Draft the landing page Sat morning, ~2h", not "work on the landing page"), and checkable. Once you have a draft — but before writing anything — hand it to the grilling skill (model-invocable; not the human-only grill-me) to pressure-test whether the user will actually do each move given their real time and energy. Let it run, then cut or reshape the steps it exposes as ones they're quietly unlikely to keep. If grilling isn't installed, say so and pressure-test it yourself. An honest plan they can keep beats an ambitious one they can't; surface collisions with other open goals.

4. Check against philosophy and the goal. Don't plan steps that reach the goal by cutting against a principle, and make sure the steps genuinely move the criteria (not adjacent busywork). If the only realistic plan conflicts with the philosophy or the goal looks unreachable as written, say so — reshape the goal (/rl-goal), don't write a plan you don't believe.

5. Mark how each step is observed. For each, note what evidence would show it happened and how the user will supply it to a later /rl-review — a report, a file/export, a screenshot, a link — so the review knows what to look for.

6. Write the action file at actions/open/<slug>.md (same slug as the goal). When refining, edit in place and bump updated. Supersede = delete: when a re-plan replaces earlier steps, remove the dead ones (or collapse a superseded block to a one-line Log pointer) — ## Plan shows only the plan now in force, and a completed step stays a one-line checked entry, not a paragraph. Timestamps per the workspace convention. In ## Log, keep the last ~3 entries; move older ones verbatim to actions/history/<slug>.md (append-only, not auto-loaded) with a one-line pointer. Leave the ## Log heading for the review skills, and make sure the goal's actions: line points back here. Shape:

   # Actions — <goal title>
   
   - goal: goals/open/<slug>.md
   - status: active                 # active | done | abandoned
   - created: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM ±HH:MM (Zone/Name)
   - updated: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM ±HH:MM (Zone/Name)
   
   ## Plan
   Only the plan in force — each step timed and checkable.
   - [ ] Step — what exactly / when / how long / by when
   
   ## How progress is observed
   Per step, what evidence would show it happened and how the user supplies it.
   
   ## Log
   Last ~3 entries; older → actions/history/<slug>.md.
   YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM ±HH:MM (Zone/Name) — [review] — source: <evidence> — what it showed, steps done/partial/not.
   

7. Confirm. Show the plan, restate in one line what the user is committing to and by when, and point them to /rl-review once they've acted.