Plan Exploration

Provides comprehensive exploration and navigation of the plan ecosystem, enabling agents to understand project status at a glance, discover plans, identify health issues, and navigate relationships between plans and design docs.

Overview

The plan-explore skill enables agents to:

1. Understand project status - See active, ready, blocked, and completed plans
2. Discover plans - Filter by module, status, design doc, or owner
3. Identify health issues - Detect stale, orphaned, or blocked plans
4. Get recommendations - Receive actionable next steps based on plan state
5. Navigate relationships - Explore plan-design doc bidirectional links

Key Features:

• Multiple output formats (summary, detailed, timeline, JSON)
• Rich filtering capabilities (module, status, design-doc, owner)
• Health analysis (staleness, orphans, blockers, schedule)
• Smart recommendations for next actions
• Fast metadata caching (5-minute TTL)

Quick Start

Show all active plans:

/plan-explore --status=in-progress

Show plans for specific module:

/plan-explore effect-type-registry

Find orphaned plans:

/plan-explore --orphans

Show stale plans:

/plan-explore --stale --age-threshold=60

Timeline view:

/plan-explore --format=timeline

Parameters

Filters

• module: Filter by module name (e.g., effect-type-registry)
• --status: Filter by status (ready, in-progress, blocked, completed, abandoned)
  • Supports multiple: --status=ready,in-progress
• --design-doc: Filter by related design doc path
• --owner: Filter by plan owner username

Display Options

• --format: Output format (summary, detailed, timeline, json) [default: summary]
• --show-phases: Show phase details [default: false]
• --show-health: Show health analysis [default: true]

Analysis Options

• --orphans: Show only orphaned plans (no design docs)
• --stale: Show only stale plans
• --blocked: Show only blocked plans
• --age-threshold: Days since update for staleness [default: 30]

Output Formats

Summary Format (Default)

Concise overview with status summary, active plans, health insights, and next actions. Typically <50 lines for clarity.

Implementation Plans Overview
============================

Status Summary:
  Ready: 3 plans
  In Progress: 5 plans (avg 45% complete)
  Blocked: 2 plans
  Completed: 12 plans

Active Plans (In Progress):
  • Subagent Integration [45%] - 2 weeks old
    Modules: design-doc-system
    Design: architecture-proposal.md

Health Insights:
  ⚠️  2 plans stale (>30 days since update)
  ✅ All blocked plans have clear dependencies

Next Actions:
  1. Update stale plans: performance-tracking-plan.md
  2. Review blocked plans for unblocking

Detailed Format

Shows full plan metadata including phases, dates, blockers, and complete design doc relationships.

Timeline Format

Chronological view grouped by date/month with schedule status:

Implementation Timeline
======================

January 2026
------------
✅ Jan 5-10: Cache System v1 (completed)
🚧 Jan 15-25: Subagent Integration (45% - in progress)
⏸️  Jan 20-30: Performance Phase 2 (blocked)

Health:
  2 plans behind schedule
  3 plans on track

JSON Format

Machine-readable output for programmatic processing.

Health Analysis

The skill performs automatic health analysis:

Staleness Detection:

• Plans with updated > 30 days ago (configurable)
• Plans in-progress with no updates for 2 weeks
• Plans with target-completion in past

Orphan Detection:

• Plans with no design-docs references
• Plans referencing non-existent design docs

Blocker Analysis:

• Plans blocked by other blocked plans (cascading blocks)
• Plans blocked by completed plans (stale blockers)

Schedule Analysis:

• Plans beyond target-completion date
• Plans with unrealistic progress rates

Supporting Documentation

When you need detailed information, load the appropriate supporting file:

For Implementation Details

See instructions.md for:

• Step-by-step exploration process
• Query algorithm details
• Health analysis implementation
• Caching strategy
• Performance optimization

Load when: Implementing the skill or debugging issues

For Usage Examples

See examples.md for:

• Common query patterns
• All filter combinations
• Output format examples
• Health analysis scenarios
• Integration with other skills

Load when: User needs examples or clarification

Integration

Works well with:

• /plan-list - Quick list of plans (lighter weight)
• /plan-validate - Validate plan structure
• /design-review - Review design docs with plan context
• /design-sync - Sync design docs and check plan progress

Success Criteria

A successful exploration:

• ✅ Returns relevant plans based on filters
• ✅ Health analysis is accurate and actionable
• ✅ Recommendations are clear and specific
• ✅ Output format is clean and readable
• ✅ Performance is acceptable (<500ms for detailed mode)
• ✅ No false positives in health checks