| name | plan-review |
| description | Review a markdown plan (from EnterPlanMode or /plan) before implementation. Triggers on "review this plan", "check my plan", "is this plan good".
|
Plan Review
Critical review of implementation plans produced by Claude's planning mode.
Input
The plan is a markdown document where:
- The first lines contain the original user prompt / problem context
- The rest describes the proposed implementation steps
Provided as a file path or inline markdown.
Review Process
1. Extract the Problem
Read the plan, isolate the original context, restate the core problem in one sentence.
2. Completeness Check
For each requirement or bug in the context, verify a plan step directly addresses it.
Flag unaddressed requirements as MISSING.
For bug fixes: verify the root cause is identified — not just symptoms.
3. Correctness & Risk Analysis
For each step, flag as INCORRECT or RISKY if:
- It could introduce regressions on existing consumers of modified code
- It relies on implicit assumptions that might not hold
- For bug fixes: it patches a symptom instead of the root cause
4. Solution Quality Assessment
Evaluate by priority:
- Problem Resolution — Does this actually fix the problem?
- Minimal Diff — Only necessary changes? Flag scope creep.
- Simplicity — Simplest approach that works? Flag over-engineering.
- Regression Safety — Accounts for existing consumers?
- Maintainability / Performance / Convention Compliance — only flag if material.
5. Alternative Solutions
Propose a better approach only when clearly superior — do not nitpick.
Output
Follow the template in references/output-template.md. Match the language of the original plan.
Important Guidelines
- Read all files referenced in the plan before judging — do not review in the abstract
- Be specific: reference exact plan steps, file paths, and line numbers
- Review scope = plan scope — do not add suggestions beyond the original context
- Bias toward APPROVE when the plan is reasonable, even if not perfect
- Bias toward REJECT when a bug fix doesn't address root cause
- For bug-fix plans, apply
systematic-debugging reasoning to validate root cause analysis
- For convention concerns, defer to
coding-convention skill criteria
Gotchas
- Plans that look complete but miss context edges: The original prompt may contain implicit requirements buried in examples or parentheticals. Read the full context twice — the second pass catches what the first skims over.
- Symptom-patching disguised as root cause fix: A plan that says "add a null check" or "add a try/catch" is likely treating symptoms. Push back unless the plan explains why the value is null or why the exception occurs.
- Scope creep via "while we're here" refactors: Plans often sneak in cleanup steps unrelated to the stated problem. These increase regression surface for zero problem-resolution value. Flag them.
- Missing regression check on consumers: Plans that modify a shared function/type rarely list the callers that need updating. If the plan touches exports or public APIs, verify it accounts for downstream impact.
- Over-confident "simple" plans for complex bugs: When a bug involves async timing, caching, or state management, a plan with fewer than 3 steps is suspicious. These bugs usually need investigation steps before fix steps.
