writing-plans
Write an executable work plan BEFORE starting a complex task — decomposed steps with verification points, risks pre-named, and explicit stop conditions — so execution becomes checking boxes instead of improvising. Use when a task will take many steps, when asked to plan before doing, when previous attempts sprawled or stalled, or before delegating work to subagents. Produces a plan document another agent (or future you) could execute without re-deriving the thinking. Pairs with executing-plans.
npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill writing-plans --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Writing Plans Skill Complex work fails in a predictable way: start confidently, discover mid-flight, improvise, sprawl, lose the thread. A written plan converts discovery into a *phase* instead of a surprise. The bar for the plan: someone else — a colleague, a subagent, you next week — could execute it without asking what you meant. ## What This Skill Produces - A **plan document**: goal, ordered steps with per-step verification, risks with tripwires, and stop conditions - Sized to the work: three lines for an hour's task, a page for a project — ceremony proportional to risk ## Plan Method 1. **State the goal as an outcome test.** Not "refactor the auth module" but "auth module passes the existing suite with the session logic isolated in one file". If you can't write the done-test, the task isn't understood yet — that's the finding; plan the *investigation* instead. 2. **Decompose to independently-verifiable steps.** Each step has: the action · the **verification** (how you'll KNOW it worked — a command, a check, an observable) · what it produces for later steps. A step you can't verify is two steps hiding as one, or a guess. 3. **Order by information value.** Front-load the step
- What This Skill Produces
- Plan Method
- Output Format
- Plan: [goal as outcome test]
- Quality Checks
- Anti-Patterns
What does the writing-plans skill do?
Write an executable work plan BEFORE starting a complex task — decomposed steps with verification points, risks pre-named, and explicit stop conditions — so execution becomes checking boxes instead of improvising. Use when a task will take many steps, when asked to plan before doing, when previous attempts sprawled or stalled, or before delegating work to subagents. Produces a plan document another agent (or future you) could execute without re-deriving the thinking. Pairs with executing-plans.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills --skill writing-plans --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From mohitagw15856/pm-claude-skills, a repository with 1,255 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.