Use at the start of any non-trivial coding task — before writing code for a new feature, a fix, or a change that spans more than a couple of lines or files. Makes the agent state a short plan and confirm direction before implementing, so you catch a wrong approach in 3 sentences instead of 300 lines.
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---
name: plan-then-build
description: Use at the start of any non-trivial coding task — before writing code for a new feature, a fix, or a change that spans more than a couple of lines or files. Makes the agent state a short plan and confirm direction before implementing, so you catch a wrong approach in 3 sentences instead of 300 lines.
---
# Plan, Then Build
For any task bigger than a trivial one-liner, **outline the approach before writing code.**
## What to do
1. **State the plan first** — a short numbered list of the steps you'll take and the files you'll touch. Keep it to a few lines; this is a sketch, not a document.
2. **Surface assumptions and choices.** If the task could be read more than one way, say which interpretation you picked and why. If there's a meaningfully simpler approach, mention it.
3. **Name the risk.** Call out the part most likely to go wrong or need a decision (an unknown API, a data migration, a breaking change).
4. **Then build.** For a clear, low-risk task, present the plan and proceed in the same turn. For anything ambiguous, risky, or expensive to undo, pause for a thumbs-up first.
## Keep it proportional
The plan should be *much* shorter than the code it precedes. A one-file bug fix gets one or two lines of plan. A multi-file feature gets a short list. Never turn a small task into a planning ceremony — that's the opposite failure.
## Why this matters
A wrong assumption caught at the plan stage costs one sentence to fix. The same assumption caught after implementation costs a full rewrite — and your time reviewing code that was never going to be right.
