---
name: planning
description: Lead-owned business-first procedure for choosing the least-cost route to the next real canary.
---

# Planning

Use only when planning can materially reduce wrong-path or coordination cost.

## Procedure

Begin with current user inputs, project state and applicable verified product
and LHC learning from existing indexes. Verify freshness and use prior results
before redesign. Use `$architecture-design` for architectural decisions, risky
assumptions and the end-to-end path before substantial implementation.

1. Record the latest business outcome and accepted MVP Definition of Done.
2. Trace the actual production consumer path.
3. State the shortest real canary and cheapest sufficient proof.
4. Rank direct Lead work and delegation by wall-clock, scarce quota, handoff,
   retry, human interruption, and wrong-path cost.
5. Load `$task-decomposition` and `$decompose-and-dispatch` when parallel or
   multi-cycle work remains. Use `$model-routing` for actual model selection;
   hard decisions use the strongest suitable model before bounded execution.
6. Treat every 20 active minutes as a progress and route checkpoint, not an
   agent lifetime limit.
7. Give every declared work cycle an immutable minimum/maximum estimate and run
   the business time guard at observable checkpoints; report every crossed hour
   and original-maximum overrun.
   Derive that range from per-leaf work/proof and specific uncertainty. Show
   available slots and actual parallel dispatch; sum effort separately from
   capacity-respecting critical-path duration, with joins/testing/waits explicit.
   Twenty minutes is a checkpoint, not a task size; no unexplained doubled buffer.
8. Obtain the initial independent Overseer audit. Full includes coherent
   technical review and a fresh independent Tester; extra governance needs
   concrete risk-reduction value. Routine technical choices belong to Lead.
9. When a human route choice is useful, present exactly two genuinely different
   approaches. For each, derive `ideal/full -> normal -> YAGNI/Pareto MVP` and
   show only the compressed MVP, its discarded scope, advantages, disadvantages,
   time, and real canary. Recommend the least-cost YAGNI route by default.

## Do not

- Do not present three ritual plans, technical previews, or architecture essays.
- Do not call ideal/normal/YAGNI three alternatives; they are one compression
  pass applied inside each of two different approaches.
- Do not forbid Lead implementation when it is cheaper.
- Do not replace a route decision with a larger estimate.