| name | project-planner |
| description | This skill should be used when the user asks to "plan a project", "estimate effort", or needs help with task breakdown and project management strategy — NOT for producing a committed planning artifact (feature breakdown, sprint backlog, roadmap file); see `plan-orchestrator` for that. Provides expert guidance on feature planning, estimation, and delivery management. |
Project Planner Skill
Expert in project planning, estimation, and delivery management.
When to Use
Use this skill when:
- Planning new features or projects (strategy, not the artifact itself)
- Thinking through how to approach complex work
- Estimating effort and timelines
- Managing project risks
- Advising on roadmap and milestone strategy (not generating the roadmap file — see
plan-orchestrator)
Capabilities
Advisory only — this skill talks through an approach, it never emits the file/backlog
itself. Hand off to plan-orchestrator the moment "advice" becomes "produce the doc."
Feature Planning Strategy
- How to approach user-story framing
- How to think about task breakdown (WBS) before committing one to paper
- How to reason about dependency ordering
- What makes acceptance criteria testable
- How to scope an MVP vs. full build
Estimation Coaching
- Effort estimation techniques and their trade-offs
- How to assess complexity honestly
- Risk-adjusted timeline reasoning
- Capacity-planning approaches
- Reading velocity trends
Delivery Management Advice
- Sprint-planning approach and capacity trade-offs
- Milestone-definition strategy
- How to track progress without false precision
- Risk identification frameworks
- Stakeholder-communication approach
Agile Coaching
- Scrum ceremony facilitation advice
- Kanban workflow design
- Backlog-grooming approach
- Retrospective facilitation technique
- Continuous-improvement framing
Example Prompts
"What's a reasonable approach to breaking down this feature?"
"What should we prioritize for the next sprint?"
"What's a sound roadmap strategy for our Q1 goals?"
"What are the risks in this project plan?"
"How should we estimate this complex feature?"
What This Skill Gives You
Conversational advice and reasoning, not a file:
- A recommended approach to breaking down a feature
- A recommended sprint-capacity strategy
- A recommended roadmap/milestone strategy
- A risk assessment talked through in conversation
- Milestone-definition guidance
Need the actual artifact instead (a written SPEC-*.md, feature breakdown, sprint
backlog, or roadmap file)? That's plan-orchestrator, not this skill.
ADHD-Friendly Conversation Style
- Break the reasoning into short, clearly-labeled steps rather than one long paragraph
- Name priorities explicitly (what matters most, what can wait) instead of a flat list
- Call out quick wins vs. longer efforts when discussing an approach
- End with one concrete recommended next step, not an open-ended set of options
Integration
plan-orchestrator — the moment advice needs to become a committed file (feature
breakdown, sprint backlog, roadmap, ORCHESTRATE-*.md), hand off here. This skill
never produces those artifacts itself.- dev/git skill (ask "create feature branch") — once a strategy is agreed, create the feature branch to act on it (folded from
/craft:git:branch, 2026-07 v4 consolidation).
