Plan Phase
Create detailed execution plan for a phase (PLAN.md) with verification loop
---
name: gsd:plan-phase
description: Create detailed execution plan for a phase (PLAN.md) with verification loop
argument-hint: "[phase] [--research] [--skip-research] [--gaps] [--skip-verify]"
agent: gsd-planner
allowed-tools:
- Read
- Write
- Bash
- Glob
- Grep
- Task
- WebFetch
- mcp__context7__*
---
<execution_context>
@.claude/get-shit-done/references/ui-brand.md
</execution_context>
<objective>
Create executable phase prompts (PLAN.md files) for a roadmap phase with integrated research and verification.
**Default flow:** Research (if needed) → Plan → Verify → Done
**Orchestrator role:** Parse arguments, validate phase, research domain (unless skipped or exists), spawn gsd-planner agent, verify plans with gsd-plan-checker, iterate until plans pass or max iterations reached, present results.
**Why subagents:** Research and planning burn context fast. Verification uses fresh context. User sees the flow between agents in main context.
</objective>
<context>
Phase number: $ARGUMENTS (optional - auto-detects next unplanned phase if not provided)
**Flags:**
- `--research` — Force re-research even if RESEARCH.md exists
- `--skip-research` — Skip research entirely, go straight to planning
- `--gaps` — Gap closure mode (reads VERIFICATION.md, skips research)
- `--skip-verify` — Skip planner → checker verification loop
Normalize phase input in step 2 before any directory lookups.
</context>
<process>
## 1. Validate Environment and Resolve Model Profile
```bash
ls .planning/ 2>/dev/null
If not found: Error - user should run /gsd:new-project first.
Resolve model profile for agent spawning:
MODEL_PROFILE=$(cat .planning/config.json 2>/dev/null | grep -o '"model_profile"[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*"[^"]*"' | grep -o '"[^"]*"$' | tr -d '"' || echo "balanced")
Default to "balanced" if not set.
Model lookup table:
| Agent | quality | balanced | budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| gsd-phase-researcher | opus | sonnet | haiku |
| gsd-planner | opus | opus | sonnet |
| gsd-plan-checker | sonnet | sonnet | haiku |
Store resolved models for use in Task calls below.
2. Parse and Normalize Arguments
Extract from $ARGUMENTS:
- Phase number (integer or decimal like
2.1) --researchflag to force re-research--skip-researchflag to skip research--gapsflag for gap closure mode--skip-verifyflag to bypass verification loop
If no phase number: Detect next unplanned phase from roadmap.
Normalize phase to zero-padded format:
# Normalize phase number (8 → 08, but preserve decimals like 2.1 → 02.1)
if [[ "$PHASE" =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then
PHASE=$(printf "%02d" "$PHASE")
elif [[ "$PHASE" =~ ^([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)$ ]]; then
PHASE=$(printf "%02d.%s" "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}" "${BASH_REMATCH[2]}")
fi
Check for existing research and plans:
ls .planning/phases/${PHASE}-*/*-RESEARCH.md 2>/dev/null
ls .planning/phases/${PHASE}-*/*-PLAN.md 2>/dev/null
3. Validate Phase
grep -A5 "Phase ${PHASE}:" .planning/ROADMAP.md 2>/dev/null
If not found: Error with available phases. If found: Extract phase number, name, description.
4. Ensure Phase Directory Exists
# PHASE is already normalized (08, 02.1, etc.) from step 2
PHASE_DIR=$(ls -d .planning/phases/${PHASE}-* 2>/dev/null | head -1)
if [ -z "$PHASE_DIR" ]; then
# Create phase directory from roadmap name
PHASE_NAME=$(grep "Phase ${PHASE}:" .planning/ROADMAP.md | sed 's/.*Phase [0-9]*: //' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr ' ' '-')
mkdir -p ".planning/phases/${PHASE}-${PHASE_NAME}"
PHASE_DIR=".planning/phases/${PHASE}-${PHASE_NAME}"
fi
5. Handle Research
If --gaps flag: Skip research (gap closure uses VERIFICATION.md instead).
If --skip-research flag: Skip to step 6.
Check config for research setting:
WORKFLOW_RESEARCH=$(cat .planning/config.json 2>/dev/null | grep -o '"research"[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*[^,}]*' | grep -o 'true\|false' || echo "true")
If workflow.research is false AND --research flag NOT set: Skip to step 6.
Otherwise:
Check for existing research:
ls "${PHASE_DIR}"/*-RESEARCH.md 2>/dev/null
If RESEARCH.md exists AND --research flag NOT set:
- Display:
Using existing research: ${PHASE_DIR}/${PHASE}-RESEARCH.md - Skip to step 6
If RESEARCH.md missing OR --research flag set:
Display stage banner:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
GSD ► RESEARCHING PHASE {X}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
◆ Spawning researcher...
Proceed to spawn researcher
Spawn gsd-phase-researcher
Gather context for research prompt:
# Get phase description from roadmap
PHASE_DESC=$(grep -A3 "Phase ${PHASE}:" .planning/ROADMAP.md)
# Get requirements if they exist
REQUIREMENTS=$(cat .planning/REQUIREMENTS.md 2>/dev/null | grep -A100 "## Requirements" | head -50)
# Get prior decisions from STATE.md
DECISIONS=$(grep -A20 "### Decisions Made" .planning/STATE.md 2>/dev/null)
# Get phase context if exists
PHASE_CONTEXT=$(cat "${PHASE_DIR}/${PHASE}-CONTEXT.md" 2>/dev/null)
Fill research prompt and spawn:
<objective>
Research how to implement Phase {phase_number}: {phase_name}
Answer: "What do I need to know to PLAN this phase well?"
</objective>
<context>
**Phase description:**
{phase_description}
**Requirements (if any):**
{requirements}
**Prior decisions:**
{decisions}
**Phase context (if any):**
{phase_context}
</context>
<output>
Write research findings to: {phase_dir}/{phase}-RESEARCH.md
</output>
Task(
prompt="First, read .claude/agents/gsd-phase-researcher.md for your role and instructions.\n\n" + research_prompt,
subagent_type="general-purpose",
model="{researcher_model}",
description="Research Phase {phase}"
)
Handle Researcher Return
## RESEARCH COMPLETE:
- Display: `Research complete. Proceeding to planning
Maintain Plan Phase?
Let people know it's listed here — add the badge (live metrics, light/dark aware) or a plain link to your README or docs.
[Plan Phase on getagentictools](https://getagentictools.com/loops/tumma72-normalize-phase-number-8-08-but-preserve-decimals-like-2-1-02-1?ref=badge)