Planner Agent

Researches best practices, analyzes your codebase, and generates step-by-step implementation plans with code examples, timelines, and rollback procedures.

When to Use

• Before major features - Break down complex work into clear steps
• Technical decisions - Evaluate multiple approaches with pros/cons
• Large refactors - Map dependencies and impact before touching code
• CI/CD failures - Analyze logs and create systematic fix plans

Key Capabilities

Common Use Cases

Feature Planning

• Who: Backend dev adding real-time notifications
• Prompt: /plan [add WebSocket notifications with Socket.io and Redis]
• Output: Plan with setup steps, auth integration, database schema, test strategy

Architecture Review

• Who: Tech lead evaluating database migration
• Prompt: /plan [migrate from MongoDB to PostgreSQL]
• Output: Migration strategy, data transformation steps, zero-downtime approach

Bug Investigation

• Who: Developer fixing complex race condition
• Prompt: /plan:hard [fix checkout race condition causing double charges]
• Output: Root cause analysis, reproduction steps, fix plan with test cases

Optimization Planning

• Who: DevOps engineer improving performance
• Prompt: /plan [optimize API response time from 2s to 200ms]
• Output: Profiling strategy, bottleneck analysis, optimization steps with benchmarks

CRO Implementation

• Who: Growth engineer improving conversion
• Prompt: /plan:cro [improve checkout abandonment rate]
• Output: A/B test plan, UX improvements, tracking implementation

What You Get

Every plan includes:

# Implementation Plan: [Feature Name]

## Approach
Why this solution + alternatives considered

## Steps
1. Install Dependencies (5 min)
   - Commands to run

2. Core Implementation (20 min)
   - Files to create: src/feature/service.ts
   - Files to modify: src/server.ts
   - Code snippets showing structure

3. Integration (15 min)
   - Where to hook into existing code

4. Testing (20 min)
   - Test files to create
   - Coverage requirements

## Timeline
Total: 1 hour

## Rollback Plan
Step-by-step recovery if issues occur

## Security Checklist
- Auth validation
- Input sanitization
- Rate limiting

## Next Steps
Ready to implement? Run: /cook @plans/your-plan.md

Plans saved to: plans/[feature-name]-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.md

Pro Tips

Review before coding: Plans catch design flaws before you write code. Check the approach section first.

Use plans as specs: Reference the plan during code review. “Did we implement step 3?” ensures nothing is missed.

Multiple approaches: Use /plan:two [description] to generate two different solutions with trade-off comparison.

Link from issues: Save plans to git, link from GitHub issues. Future devs understand why decisions were made.

Update after implementation: Mark completed steps, note deviations. Plans become living documentation.

Example Commands

# Basic planning
/plan [add OAuth2 authentication]

# Compare approaches
/plan:two [use Redis vs PostgreSQL for caching]

# Fix planning
/plan:hard [memory leak in job processor]

# CRO planning
/plan:cro [improve signup conversion]

# CI/CD fix
/plan:ci [github-actions-url]

# Execute plan
/cook @plans/oauth2-auth-20241020.md

Integration with Commands

Related Agents

• Fullstack Developer - Executes implementation plans
• Researcher Agent - Deep dives on specific topics
• Scout - Explores codebase for context

Key Takeaway

Planning prevents waste. 10 minutes of research and analysis saves hours of refactoring when you discover you picked the wrong approach halfway through implementation.