phase-plan-generate
Generate comprehensive plan documentation following Template 1 format. Use when creating plan.md files for new components or subsections.
Generate comprehensive plan documentation following Template 1 format. Use when creating plan.md files for new components or subsections.
Complete workflow for evaluating implementation plans before execution with quality checklist and structured feedback
Evaluate third-party vendors for engineering fit. Use when a senior developer needs a structured vendor assessment.
Use when running meetings, workshops, brainstorms, design sprints, retrospectives, or team decision-making sessions. Apply when need structured group discussion, managing diverse stakeholder input, ensuring equal participation, handling conflict or groupthink, or when user mentions facilitation, workshop design, meeting patterns, session planning, or running effective collaborative sessions.
Use when starting technical work requiring structured approach - writing tests before code (TDD), planning data exploration (EDA), designing statistical analysis, clarifying modeling objectives (causal vs predictive), or validating results. Invoke when user mentions "write tests for", "explore this dataset", "analyze", "model", "validate", or when technical work needs systematic scaffolding before execution.
Back-of-envelope calculations for system design. Use when estimating QPS, storage, bandwidth, or latency for capacity planning. Includes latency numbers every programmer should know and common estimation patterns.
Use when proposing new features/products, documenting product requirements, creating concise specs for stakeholder alignment, pitching initiatives, scoping projects before detailed design, capturing user stories and success metrics, or when user mentions one-pager, PRD, product spec, feature proposal, product requirements, or brief.
Jeff Patton's User Story Mapping technique for Agile discovery. Visualizes user journey as a map, identifies backbone activities, walking skeleton, and release slices. Use when organizing requirements into deliverable increments or defining MVP scope.
Guide progression from In-Loop to Out-Loop to Zero-Touch Engineering. Use when assessing agentic maturity, planning ZTE progression, or identifying requirements for autonomous operation.
Define engineering standards across teams. Use when a senior developer needs to align practices.
Assess a system for growth bottlenecks. Use when a senior developer needs to evaluate scaling limits.
Use Case 2.0 methodology by Ivar Jacobson. Covers use case slices, lightweight documentation, user story derivation, and value-driven prioritization. Modern approach to use case modeling for agile teams.
Deep dive Event Storming beyond big picture
Use when making decisions under time pressure or uncertainty, preventing errors in complex procedures, designing decision rules or checklists, simplifying complex choices, or when user mentions heuristics, rules of thumb, mental models, checklists, error prevention, cognitive biases, satisficing, or needs practical decision shortcuts and systematic error reduction.
Structured approach to workplace conflicts, performance discussions, and challenging feedback using preparation-delivery-followup framework. Use when preparing for tough conversations, addressing conflicts, giving critical feedback, or navigating sensitive workplace discussions.
Reverse Thinking - Information Completeness Assessment. Mandatory pre-planning checkpoint that blocks planning until prerequisites are verified. Use when receiving specs, PRDs, tickets, RFCs, architecture designs, or any multi-step engineering task. Integrates with CoVe-style planning pipelines. Invoke BEFORE creating plans, delegating to agents, or defining acceptance criteria.
Requirements prioritization techniques including MoSCoW, Kano Model, WSJF (SAFe), and Wiegers' Value/Cost/Risk matrix. Provides scoring frameworks, trade-off analysis, and priority visualization. Use when ranking requirements by business value, customer impact, or implementation efficiency.
Use when making quick order-of-magnitude estimates under uncertainty (market sizing, resource planning, feasibility checks), decomposing complex quantities into estimable parts, bounding unknowns with upper/lower limits, sanity-checking strategic assumptions, or when user mentions Fermi estimation, back-of-envelope calculation, order of magnitude, ballpark estimate, triangulation, or needs to assess feasibility before detailed analysis.
Competency frameworks, level expectations (Junior to Staff+), and career progression paths for software engineers. Use when navigating promotions, understanding level requirements, or planning career advancement.
Break a task or ticket into small steps. Use when a junior developer needs guidance on how to start.
Use when stakeholders need aligned working agreements, resolving decision authority ambiguity, navigating cross-functional conflicts, establishing governance frameworks (RACI/DACI/RAPID), negotiating resource allocation, defining escalation paths, creating team norms, mediating trade-off disputes, or when user mentions stakeholder alignment, decision rights, working agreements, conflict resolution, governance model, or consensus building.
Use when documenting significant technical or architectural decisions that need context, rationale, and consequences recorded. Invoke when choosing between technology options, making infrastructure decisions, establishing standards, migrating systems, or when team needs to understand why a decision was made. Use when user mentions ADR, architecture decision, technical decision record, or decision documentation.
Global contract for all specialist subagents. Enforces role boundaries, scope discipline, and DONE/BLOCKED status signaling. Load this skill in any agent that should operate as a bounded specialist following supervisor delegation patterns.