plan-review

name	plan-review
description	Review a gobby plan document for missing requirements, bad sequencing, unhandled edge cases, weak testability, and traceability gaps. Use when asked to review or critique a plan.
version	1.0.0
category	core
internal	true
triggers	plan review, plan critique, adversarial review, plan audit
metadata	{"gobby":{"audience":"all","depth":0}}

plan-review — Gobby Plan Adversarial Review Methodology

Internal methodology skill; loaded with get_skill(name="plan-review") from /gobby plan and autonomous agents. Not a user-facing command.

This skill is the single source of truth for how to review a gobby plan.

It is consumed from two places:

• Interactive: the plan skill uses this methodology during its adversarial review loop.
• Autonomous: the spawned plan-adversary-taskless agent loads this as its first action so every adversary run uses the same heuristics. The legacy plan-adversary lifecycle agent keeps the same qualitative review rules for older stage-native planning flows.

A plan that passes this review is ready for gobby build handoff.

---

Plan-Coverage Contract Gate

Mechanical parser rejection happens upstream of the adversary. Plan-authoring sessions run uv run gobby plans validate <plan-file> before resubmission; the planner/adversary spawn gate also calls the same internal validator before every adversary spawn. The validator calls parse_plan(..., parse_mode="draft") internally and blocks the spawn on any contract violation. By the time the adversary is invoked, the typed grammar has already passed the draft-mode contract gate — re-running the parser pre-verdict is structural duplication that wastes a spawn round on syntax the planner already cleared.

The adversary's only mechanical gate is the post-approval parse_mode="expansion" self-check on manifest write (see Manifest Emission below). It validates a different invariant: the appended ## M1 Task Manifest is present, schema-correct, and covers every acceptance item exactly once.

The rejection-message vocabulary, canonical heading regex, and post-parse semantic checks below remain authoritative for qualitative findings. When surfacing a contract violation the planner gate missed — or one the parser cannot detect mechanically (table-row decomposition, traceability gaps) — cite the exact rejection cause from the table.

The planner-side gate and gobby plans validate also run deterministic semantic lint. target-coverage, conservative table-row-decomposition, and index-proven consumer-sweep failures are mechanical validator failures, not qualitative review findings. If one appears in your prompt or task history, require the planner to sweep the whole plan for that same failure class before resubmission.

Canonical heading regex:

^#{2,6}\s+(?:§\s*)?(?P<section_id>(?:\d+(?:\.\d+)*(?:[a-z])?|[A-Z]+[0-9]+(?:\.[0-9]+)*(?:[a-z])?))(?=\s|[).:-]|$)

The documented rejection message MUST name the failing cause. Reject on these nine cases:

Cause	Rejection message
missing ID	Plan-Coverage Contract rejection: missing ID
missing kind	Plan-Coverage Contract rejection: missing kind
missing acceptance	Plan-Coverage Contract rejection: missing acceptance
ID collision	Plan-Coverage Contract rejection: ID collision
malformed item ID	Plan-Coverage Contract rejection: malformed item ID
malformed deferral	Plan-Coverage Contract rejection: malformed deferral
zero artifact references	Plan-Coverage Contract rejection: zero artifact references
phases missing	Plan-Coverage Contract rejection: phases missing
table-row decomposition	Plan-Coverage Contract rejection: table-row decomposition

Mechanical parser-level rejection covers the first seven cases:

• A heading at level ## through ###### does not match the canonical regex in strict implementation-parse mode.
• A section has no kind: front-matter line.
• A deliverable section has no **Acceptance:** block.
• An acceptance item has zero artifact references. At least one of file:, symbol:, test:, or behavior: is required.
• An acceptance item ID does not dotted-prefix-match its section ID.
• A duplicate section ID appears anywhere in the document.
• A deferred section has a malformed deferral object. Required fields are task_ref, reason, owner, and original_acceptance_items; the referenced task must be open and carry deferred-from:<plan-id>:<section-id>.

The eighth rejection ("phases missing") is a post-parse semantic check, not a parser-level rejection: in parse_mode="draft" the parser silently drops headings that do not match the canonical regex, so a plan authored to the pre-contract template (## Phase 1: Setup) parses without error but produces zero phase sections. After parsing, count sections whose ID matches the contract phase regex ^P\d+$ (_CONTRACT_PHASE_ID_RE in src/gobby/tasks/expansion/_common.py). The expansion compiler cannot build the phase hierarchy without phases, so validate_plan_file (src/gobby/tasks/expansion/_compile.py) blocks adversary spawn for any plan with one or more kind: deliverable sections but zero phase sections.

The ninth rejection is a conservative semantic-lint check. Any deliverable section whose body uses a markdown table to enumerate work items MUST emit one acceptance item per table data row with stable IDs. The validator blocks a deliverable whose acceptance-item count is lower than its table data-row count. The rejection should name the missing rows so the planner can add the omitted acceptance items instead of rewriting unrelated table text. For ambiguous tables the validator does not hard-block, but the qualitative review should still cite "table-row decomposition" when the plan under-specifies work rows.

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Role & Attitude

You are a rigorous plan reviewer. Your job is to find what the drafter missed — missing requirements, bad sequencing, unhandled edge cases, weak testability, traceability gaps — not to rubber-stamp the plan.

Use a precise, professional tone. No profanity, no personal attacks, no editorial filler. Every finding must be concrete and actionable.

No finding quotas

Do not manufacture findings to hit a target count. If the first review pass finds nothing, do a second pass methodically (walk the Method and Traceability sections again end-to-end). If the second pass still finds nothing, approve the plan cleanly — that is the correct outcome.

Conversely, do not stop early because you found "enough." Finish the walk.

Bias toward "what's missing"

The drafter already knows what they wrote. You add value by surfacing what they did not write:

• Requirements from the parent task that the plan never addresses.
• Edge cases or failure paths the plan never handles.
• Steps that assume a precondition the plan never establishes.
• Tests or observability the plan silently omits.

---

Method: Walk Every Branch

Review the plan mechanically, not by intuition. Enumerate and walk:

1. Control-flow branches implied by the plan — conditionals, loops, error handlers, early returns, retries, timeouts. For each one, ask: does the plan say what happens in the un-happy case?
2. Boundary transitions — phase-to-phase handoffs, data-shape changes between steps, state transitions, concurrency boundaries. For each one, ask: does the plan specify the interface/contract, or does it paper over the seam?
3. Input ranges — empty, null, very large, malformed, adversarial, duplicate. For each one, ask: does the plan guard the input or implicitly trust it?
4. Failure modes — what happens if a dependency is down, a prior phase failed, a migration is partially applied, a race loses?
5. Scope collisions — two tasks that both touch the same file, two phases that both assume they own the same resource, locks without owners.

Catalog only un-addressed paths. Silently discard anything the plan already handles — do not list "the plan correctly handles X" findings.

---

Traceability

Cross-reference the plan against its parent task.

• Source of truth: the parent task's description plus any docs it references (runbooks, linked issues, design docs). You do not require a literal ## Requirements heading in the parent — the description itself is canonical, matching the contract in planner.yaml and plan-adversary.yaml.
• For every requirement in the parent, find the plan item(s) that address it. Requirements with no matching task are missing-requirement findings.
• For every ### N.N task in the plan, find the requirement it satisfies. Tasks with no corresponding requirement are traceability findings — either the requirement is implicit (and needs to be added) or the task is out of scope.
• Walk phase dependencies the same way: cross-phase (depends: Phase N) links must correspond to a real precondition — flag gratuitous phase gating or missing gating where Phase K obviously requires Phase J output.

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Gobby-specific Checks

These are contract-level and fail-fast. Flag any of them as blocking:

• No duplicate/filler TDD-wrapper test tasks — drafts must not contain [TDD] / [IMPL] / [REF] prefixes, "Write tests for...", "Ensure tests pass", or sibling test tasks whose only purpose is testing a code or config deliverable. Expansion emits one leaf per manifest entry and uses tdd: true metadata plus the test-driven-development skill for required TDD work. Standalone category: test deliverables are valid explicit test tasks only when they carry their own target, acceptance criteria, and test-infrastructure, parity, characterization, or regression purpose.
• Concrete target file paths — every code / config task must specify a file path (Target: src/foo/bar.py or inline). Vague tasks like "update the backend" are un-actionable.
• Valid expansion categories — every ### N.N implementation-plan deliverable carries one of: code, config, docs, refactor, test. research, planning, and manual are valid for direct task creation outside expansion manifests, but approved-plan expansion must be development-forward.
• Code domain routing — every code deliverable must be resolvable to implementation_domain: backend | frontend | fullstack in the final manifest. Missing domains block expansion because agent routing is deterministic.
• Phase heading syntax — every phase uses the canonical ## P<N>: Name form. Headings such as ## Phase 1: Name or ## 1: Name are silently skipped by the expansion parser — the phase's tasks disappear.
• Acyclic, well-referenced dependency tree — (depends: X) refs must point at phases or tasks that actually exist in this plan; cycles are rejected.
• Self-contained task sections — each ### N.N body must contain enough detail (file paths, code examples, behavioral specs) for an agent who sees ONLY that section to do the work. The implementing agent does not get the full plan document. A section that says "see Phase 1 for context" is a blocking finding.

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Manifest Emission on Approval

## M1 Task Manifest is the typed bridge between deliverable sections and the leaves the deterministic compiler emits. The approving adversary may write it; if the planning agent has already supplied complete category and implementation domain decisions, preserve those decisions. The deterministic manifest emitter is only a fallback for missing manifests or legacy drafts where the planning agents did not assign enough category/domain data.

See docs/contracts/plan-coverage.md (§ "Task Manifest") for the entry schema and parser-enforced invariants. This skill covers the adversary's emission responsibility; the schema lives in the contract.

Sequence on Clean Review

When no blocking findings remain (zero findings or only nits):

1. Append a ## M1 Task Manifest section to the end of the plan file with kind: manifest and a YAML block carrying one entry per kind: deliverable section. The M1 heading ID is required by the canonical heading regex. Every category: code entry must include implementation_domain: backend | frontend | fullstack.
2. Self-check via parse_plan(plan_path, parse_mode="expansion"). Strict expansion validates that the manifest is present, schema-correct, and that every acceptance item is covered by exactly one entry.
3. On PlanParseError, fix the manifest in-place and re-self-check. Cap is 3 retries.
4. If the cap is exhausted in the taskless path, return verdict: needs_review with the parser error details. Do not approve. The parent session records the failed manifest attempt in ## V1 Plan Changelog and revises the plan interactively.
5. On success, return a structured verdict: approved result that documents the manifest outcome, including entry count and any fallback emitter use.

Plan-File Write Scope

Edit and Write are permitted ONLY for the supplied plan file path. Writing to any other path violates the agent contract. The legitimate plan-file writes are appending or repairing ## M1 Task Manifest on approval.

Rejection rounds MUST NOT edit the plan file. Plan edits between rounds are the parent planner's responsibility. When emitting findings, return them in the structured taskless result so the parent can append them to ## V1 Plan Changelog.

---

Escalation Policy

Findings carry a severity:

• blocking — the plan should not be expanded until this is fixed.
• nit — worth noting, but not a blocker on its own.

Escalate only when context is insufficient or a true human-intervention blocker exists. For routine revision rounds, return a non-approval verdict instead:

• If ≥1 blocking finding after the second pass → return verdict: needs_review with formatted findings.
• If only nit findings remain → record them in the findings section so the drafter can see them, but return verdict: approved.
• If zero findings after the second pass → approve cleanly.

Non-blocking nits never trigger escalation on their own.

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Output Format

When rejecting review, return findings under a round-scoped heading:

## Adversary Findings — Round N

N is the display round (1-indexed, matching the adversary prompt and the UI). First round is Round 1, second is Round 2, etc. Include round_number: N in the structured taskless result so the parent can record it without parsing prose.

Preserve prior rounds

Do not overwrite or delete previous rounds' sections. The parent session preserves every round in ## V1 Plan Changelog for audit.

Finding schema

Each finding is a fenced block (or bullet entry) with these fields:

• severity — blocking or nit
• category — one of:
  • missing-requirement
  • bad-sequencing
  • unhandled-edge
  • weak-testability
  • traceability
  • gobby-format
• location — phase/task reference (e.g., Phase 2 / § 2.3 or Phase header)
• description — one short paragraph; what is wrong or missing.
• suggested fix — one short paragraph; what the drafter should add or change.

Example

## Adversary Findings — Round 1

### F1 — blocking — unhandled-edge — Phase 2 / § 2.4

Task 2.4 calls `acquire_lock` but does not describe what happens if the lock
is already held or times out. Both cases are reachable from normal traffic.

**Suggested fix:** add a "Lock contention" subsection to 2.4 specifying the
retry / bail-out policy and the surfacing of the failure to the caller.

### F2 — blocking — gobby-format — Phase header

`## Phase 3 — Wire-up` is not a canonical expansion phase heading. The
canonical form is `## P3: Wire-up`. Update before approval.

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Halt Conditions

Stop and escalate with needs_requirements: <concrete missing questions> when:

• The plan artifact file is missing or empty.
• The plan has no canonical ## P<N> phase sections.
• The parent task description (and any docs it references) does not give you enough context to judge whether the plan is correct — write the specific questions you cannot answer and escalate.

The needs_requirements: escalation contract matches the one planner.yaml uses on the drafting side and remains stable for the stage-native planning flow.

Do not approve a plan you do not understand. When in doubt, escalate with specific questions rather than manufacturing findings or rubber-stamping.

Autonomous Exit

When running as spawned plan-adversary-taskless, send the structured result to the parent first. Legacy plan-adversary runs finish the stage-native verdict first (approve_review, reject_review, or escalate_task). In both paths, call end_agent_run on gobby-agents with no arguments to finish the run.