- name
- planning-and-task-breakdown
- description
- Breaks work into ordered tasks. Use when you have a spec or clear requirements and need to break work into implementable tasks. Use when a task feels too large to start, when you need to estimate scope, or when parallel work is possible.
Planning and Task Breakdown
Overview
Decompose work into small, verifiable tasks with explicit acceptance criteria. Good task breakdown is the difference between an agent that completes work reliably and one that produces a tangled mess. Every task should be small enough to implement, test, and verify in a single focused session.
When to Use
- You have a spec and need to break it into implementable units
- A task feels too large or vague to start
- Work needs to be parallelized across multiple agents or sessions
- You need to communicate scope to a human
- The implementation order isn't obvious
When NOT to use: Single-file changes with obvious scope, or when the spec already contains well-defined tasks.
The Planning Process
Step 1: Enter Plan Mode
Before writing any code, operate in read-only mode:
- Read the spec and relevant codebase sections
- Identify existing patterns and conventions
- Map dependencies between components
- Note risks and unknowns
Do NOT write code during planning. The output is a plan document saved to tasks/plan.md and a task list recorded in the task list target (see Output Files; default tasks/todo.md), not implementation.
Step 2: Identify the Dependency Graph
Map what depends on what:
Database schema
│
├── API models/types
│ │
│ ├── API endpoints
│ │ │
│ │ └── Frontend API client
│ │ │
│ │ └── UI components
│ │
│ └── Validation logic
│
└── Seed data / migrations
Implementation order follows the dependency graph bottom-up: build foundations first.
Step 3: Slice Vertically
Instead of building all the database, then all the API, then all the UI — build one complete feature path at a time:
Bad (horizontal slicing):
Task 1: Build entire database schema
Task 2: Build all API endpoints
Task 3: Build all UI components
Task 4: Connect everything