| name | aiwfx-plan-epic |
| description | Scopes, refines, and documents a new aiwf epic. Allocates the next E-NN id via `aiwf add epic`, scaffolds an epic spec from its template, fills in goal/context/scope/constraints/success criteria, and stages the spec for the user's review. Use when the user says "plan feature X", "design the system for Y", or "I need to build Z". Calls aiwf — requires the aiwf binary. |
aiwfx-plan-epic
Scopes a new epic and produces its spec. The skill does the planning conversation and the spec authoring; aiwf owns id allocation and commit.
When to use
The user wants to start planning a feature, capability, or initiative that doesn't fit inside a single milestone. Phrases that trigger this skill: "plan feature X", "design the system for Y", "I want to build Z", "start an epic for …".
If the work fits in one milestone, skip this skill and use aiwfx-plan-milestones directly under an existing epic.
Workflow
-
Understand the request. Ask, don't guess.
- What problem does this solve?
- Who benefits?
- What's in scope; what's explicitly out of scope?
- What constraints (tech stack, timeline, dependencies)?
- What does success look like at epic close?
-
Check existing context.
- Read
ROADMAP.md (if present) for current epics and priorities.
- Walk
work/epics/ for related or overlapping epics.
- Walk
work/gaps/ for previously deferred work that fits the new epic's scope.
-
Confirm scope with the user. Spell back what you understood. Get a yes before writing.
-
Allocate the id and scaffold the spec.
aiwf add epic --title "<imperative title>"
aiwf allocates the next free E-NN, creates work/epics/E-NN-<slug>/epic.md with the minimal body skeleton (## Goal / ## Scope / ## Out of scope), and produces one commit with aiwf-verb: add trailers.
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Replace the body with the rich template at .claude/templates/epic-spec.md (materialized by aiwf update; if it's missing, run aiwf update rather than copying an existing epic spec). Fill in:
- Goal — 1–2 sentences, value-shaped.
- Context — what exists; why now; prior epics this builds on.
- Scope — in / out, both populated.
- Constraints — invariants, banned shortcuts, shim policies.
- Success criteria — observable outcomes at epic close, not tests.
- Open questions — what's blocking; how each gets resolved.
- Risks — only if there are real risks.
- Milestones — known candidates with one-line descriptions; refine via
aiwfx-plan-milestones.
Keep frontmatter (id:, status:) untouched — aiwf add set those correctly. The spec's body is where the planning conversation lives.
Land the filled-in body through the trailered verb, not a plain git commit:
aiwf edit-body E-NN
aiwf edit-body <id> commits the working-copy body bytes with provenance trailers in one atomic operation; a plain git commit against the spec would trip the kernel's provenance-untrailered-entity-commit finding. See the aiwf-edit-body skill for the --body-file and --reason variants.
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Use reference-phrasing for list-derived counts. When success criteria reference a list defined elsewhere in the spec, phrase as a reference, not a count. "Every ADR listed in the ADRs produced table is merged" not "all 16 ADRs merged". Counts drift; references don't.
-
Update ROADMAP.md by running:
aiwf render roadmap --write
--write only rewrites the file on disk — it does not commit. If the content changed, stage and commit it:
git add ROADMAP.md
git commit -m "docs(roadmap): regenerate after planning E-NN" \
--trailer "aiwf-verb: plan-epic" \
--trailer "aiwf-entity: E-NN" \
--trailer "aiwf-actor: human/<id>"
The trailer keys are quoted from CLAUDE.md §"Commit conventions" verbatim — variant casings (e.g. Aiwf-Verb) fail the kernel's trailer-keys policy. Skip the git add/git commit if the render reported the file already up to date. This regenerates the markdown table of epics + milestones from the current tree. Don't hand-edit the roadmap.
-
Optional tracker linkage. If the project mirrors planning into an external issue tracker, create or link the epic record according to the project's convention.
What this skill does NOT do
- Does not promote the epic to
active. The epic stays proposed until milestones are planned and work begins. Use aiwf promote E-NN active when ready.
- Does not break the epic into milestones. That's
aiwfx-plan-milestones.
- Does not merge the planning commits to main — the body fill lands via
aiwf edit-body as one trailered commit on the ritual branch (step 5); merging those commits to main is the separate Closing the planning session step.
Anti-patterns
- Planning the epic and immediately starting work. Don't skip review. The epic spec is the place where scope changes are cheap; once milestones are running, scope changes are expensive.
- Hand-writing scalar counts. "5 milestones" rots; "every milestone listed below" doesn't.
- Treating "Open questions" as scratch. If a question is blocking, state how it gets resolved.
- Inventing id-shaped labels for not-yet-allocated milestones. Per CLAUDE.md: don't write
M-a, M-alpha, M-NNNN, "Phase 1", "alpha/beta" anywhere — committed prose or conversation. The mechanical chokepoint body-prose-id catches malformed shapes that leak into committed bodies; the discipline above keeps the conversation clean. In conversation, when sequencing several not-yet-allocated milestones, short numeric labels (M-1, M-2, M-3) are acceptable as conversational shorthand — distinguishable from canonical ids by their narrow width. Once aiwf add milestone runs, the verb assigns the canonical id and the deliverable name becomes the slug; replace the casual labels with the real ids in any prose that lands in entity bodies.
Closing the planning session
Planning is closed. Two paths from here:
- Continue to milestones now → invoke
aiwfx-plan-milestones. The merge-to-main prompt fires at its end, covering both skills' commits in one operation.
- Planning complete for now → the epic spec is settled but no milestones are planned yet. The planning commits live on the ritual branch; merge them to main now so the freshly-allocated
E-NNNN id and the spec are visible to other worktrees, machines, or operators.
For this planning-complete path, prompt the user as a strong recommendation with explicit decline (not optional guidance):
Planning is closed. Default behavior is to merge to main now. Decline only with a specific reason — entity shape uncertain, near-term re-planning expected, team convention overrides. Merge now? (Y/n)
When the operator confirms, drive the in-place merge:
git checkout main
git merge --ff-only <ritual-branch>
When the operator declines, capture the one-line reason in the conversation transcript so future readers know.
Workflow assumption — single checkout, not a worktree. The skill assumes the operator runs planning in a single checkout (the same one calling the skill). Planning is sequential conversation; it doesn't benefit from worktree-level parallelism, and the cwd-and-session switching that worktrees impose adds friction without payoff. Worktrees are an implementation-phase tool, not a planning-phase tool.
Next step
→ aiwfx-plan-milestones to break the epic into sequenced milestones, or merge to main if planning is complete for now. Once milestones are planned, aiwfx-start-epic E-NN performs the sovereign proposed → active promote and cuts the epic branch; aiwfx-start-milestone <M-NNNN> runs after that, only once the planning commits have landed on main.
