st-create-plan

name	st-create-plan
description	Use when the user asks to draft, scope, or write up a new Strikethroo plan for a work order, feature, or initiative in this repository — triggers include create plan, new plan, plan this, scope a plan, strikethroo plan. Do not use to decompose an existing plan into tasks, to execute a plan, or for generic brainstorming outside Strikethroo.

st-create-plan

Drive the end-to-end creation of a new Strikethroo plan for the user's repository. The skill is assistant-agnostic and self-contained: every script it invokes lives under this skill's scripts/ directory and is referenced by relative path.

Inputs

The user's request supplies the work order. Treat it as the only authoritative source of intent. Do not invent answers to clarifying questions — prompt the user instead.

Operating Procedure

1. Locate the strikethroo root

Run scripts/find-strikethroo-root.cjs from the user's working directory. The script walks up looking for .ai/strikethroo/.init-metadata.json and prints the absolute path of the resolved root on success.

If the script exits non-zero, the working directory is not inside an initialized strikethroo workspace. Stop and ask the user to run the project initializer (e.g. npx strikethroo init) before continuing. Do not attempt to create a plan outside of a valid root.

For every subsequent step, treat the path printed by this script as <root>.

2. Load project context

Read <root>/config/STRIKETHROO.md for the directory structure conventions this project uses. Read <root>/config/hooks/PRE_PLAN.md and execute the instructions it contains before proceeding. Read <root>/config/templates/PLAN_TEMPLATE.md so the plan you emit conforms to its structure.

Also read <root>/config/shared/clarification-gate.md and <root>/config/shared/anti-rationalization.md. The steps below require you to apply them.

3. Analyze the work order

Identify:

• Objective and end goal.
• Scope and explicit boundaries.
• Success criteria.
• Dependencies, prerequisites, blockers.
• Technical requirements and constraints.

4. Clarification loop

If any critical context is missing, ask the user targeted questions. Keep looping until you have no further questions. Explicitly confirm whether backwards compatibility is required. Never invent answers; never paper over a missing answer.

If the user declines to clarify a blocking question, stop and report the plan as needing clarification. Do not produce a partial plan.

Follow the clarification cadence in <root>/config/shared/clarification-gate.md.

Apply <root>/config/shared/anti-rationalization.md to this rationalization table:

You catch yourself thinking…	The binding rule
"I can reasonably assume the answer."	An assumption is not an answer. Ask the question; never invent answers.
"Asking again is annoying."	A question the user can decline is recoverable; a silent wrong assumption is not. Ask.
"The user implied it, so it's settled."	An implication is not a confirmation. Surface it as a question and get an explicit answer.

5. Allocate the next plan ID

Run scripts/get-next-plan-id.cjs to obtain the next available plan ID. Pass <root> as the first argument when invoking the script from a working directory that is not inside the project, otherwise no argument is required. The script prints a single integer.

Compute the zero-padded form for directory naming ({padded-id}--{slug}) and use the unpadded integer in the plan frontmatter and the final summary.

6. Emit the plan

Write the plan to:

<root>/plans/{padded-id}--{slug}/plan-{padded-id}--{slug}.md

The output must:

• Conform to <root>/config/templates/PLAN_TEMPLATE.md, including required YAML frontmatter fields (at minimum id, summary, created).
• Contain the standard sections from the template body.
• Use Markdown, not free-form prose.
• Avoid time estimates, task lists, or code samples — those belong to the later task-generation step.

The <slug> is derived from the plan summary: lowercase, alphanumeric and hyphens only, collapsed, trimmed.

7. Run post-plan hook

Execute <root>/config/hooks/POST_PLAN.md after the plan file is written.

8. Emit the structured summary

Conclude with exactly this block as the final output:

---

Plan Summary:
- Plan ID: [numeric-id]
- Plan File: [absolute-path-to-plan-file]

The summary is consumed by downstream automation; keep the format exact.

Failure Modes

• No strikethroo root found. Stop, instruct the user to initialize the project. Do not write any files.
• User refuses to answer a clarifying question that blocks planning. Report needs-clarification and stop. Do not produce a plan.
• Plan ID script fails. Re-check the resolved root and re-run. If it continues to fail, surface stderr to the user and stop — do not guess an ID.
• Plan directory already exists for the allocated ID. Re-run the next-plan-id script (a concurrent run may have advanced it) and retry once. If the conflict persists, stop and report.