Plan

This is a Hermes-native plan workflow skill.

Why This Exists

plan exists so a feature or a fix gets its goals, non-goals, risks, acceptance criteria, and verification shape written down and accepted by the user before any code moves, with every step small enough to check and no implementation hidden inside the plan text.

Do Not Use When

• The request is casual chat, a status-only acknowledgement, or another workflow has stronger routing evidence.
• The user needs implementation, review, CI, merge, or external publishing evidence that has not been delegated or observed.

Examples

Good example:

• Prompt: plan: handle a planning request that needs explicit evidence boundaries and a clear stop condition.
• Expected behavior: Run plan only after naming the target, evidence boundary, and stop condition.
• Why: The request matches the catalog use case and keeps observed evidence separate from prepared guidance.

Bad example:

• Prompt: plan: treat casual chat or unaccepted work as if this workflow already produced verified results.
• Expected behavior: Ask a clarification question or route to a narrower workflow instead of forcing plan.
• Why: The request lacks the required inputs or would overclaim work that Hermes did not observe.

Completion Checklist

• The plan names goals, non-goals, assumptions, acceptance criteria, and verification shape.
• Draft recommendations, accepted decisions, and executor handoffs are separate states.
• Rejected options or unresolved tradeoffs are recorded before handoff.
• When the plan describes code changes, it has a Review Focus section with at most 5 uncovered inputs and their owning tasks, or one stating the check found none.

Recovery Notes

• If acceptance criteria or verification are missing, route back to clarification before handoff.
• If assumptions materially affect the plan, keep them visible and avoid treating the plan as accepted.

Workflow Lane

• Current lane: Intent -> plan (oh-my-hermes, meta-router, deep-interview, context, plan, ralplan, adversarial-consensus, codebase-onboarding, +9 more) - clarify, plan, ship, or loop goals.
• If intent belongs to another lane, hand back to oh-my-hermes or name the adjacent workflow.
• Shared product, routing, compatibility, and evidence rules: skill_view(name='omh-routing', file_path='references/skill-common-rail.md').

When to Use

Use for structured planning when implementation is not ready to start safely, including feature work that needs a safe plan before handoff.

Strong routing signals: `plan`, `$plan`, `implementation plan`, `make a plan`, `write a plan`, `write the plan`, `task breakdown`, `safe feature`, `safely add a feature`, `add a feature`, `feature request`, `new feature`, `product triage`, `bug triage`, `issue triage`, `reproduction plan`, `workflow hub`, `coding handoff`, `project template`, `github pr workflow`, `実装計画`, `タスク分解`, `安全に機能追加`, `機能追加の計画`, `답할 차례`, `준비할 차례`, `재현 계획`, `요구사항 정리`, `작업 허브`, `작업 허브가 필요`, `상태와 다음 행동`, `프로젝트별 운영`, `实现计划`, `任务拆解`, `安全地新增功能`, `新增功能计划`, `susun rencana implementasi`, `pecah fitur ini jadi langkah pengerjaan`, `bantu rencanakan penambahan fitur`, `tolong bikin rencana perbaikan bug`, `susun tahapan implementasi sebelum mulai coding`, `lập kế hoạch thực hiện`, `chia tính năng này thành các bước thực hiện`, `giúp lên kế hoạch thêm tính năng`, `hãy lập kế hoạch sửa lỗi`, `xác định các giai đoạn thực hiện trước khi code`

Catalog Metadata

Category: planning Phase: plan Hermes role: planner Quality tier: acceptance-gated Reasoning demand: standard

Quality bar:

• Make goals, non-goals, risks, acceptance criteria, and verification shape explicit.
• Where the repository declares non-negotiable principles, load references/project-constitution.md and record the check: a plan conflicting with a MUST is resolved by changing the plan, never by reinterpreting the principle.
• Keep draft plans unapproved until the user accepts; a wrapper must carry their answer.
• Only prepare coding handoff guidance after the plan is accepted.
• When the plan describes code changes, add a Review Focus section listing at most 5 inputs or failure modes the requirements imply that no planned test covers, likeliest first, each with its expected behavior and the owning task that will add the test; an input the requirements do not mention must still leave the result intact, and when the check turns up nothing the section says it found none.
• When the plan describes code changes, keep each step to a single action whose outcome can be checked - a named test and what it asserts, an exact signature and its file, or a command and the output that counts as passing; a step that leaves the choice open (TBD, make it robust) is a gap.
• When the plan describes code changes, run a proportion check before acceptance: if the plan text outgrows the code it leads to, or is mostly function bodies, implementation has leaked into it; reduce bodies to test names, assertions, and signatures.
• Take plan acceptance only from the answer the user gave — the response status and value the question tool returns, or the user's own reply — never from the wording of the question you asked: when the acceptance question times out, is dismissed, or returns with no answer, the plan stays unaccepted, so record no acceptance, prepare no handoff, and start nothing; a missing answer is not a refusal either, so ask again later or report the plan as awaiting acceptance.
• Plan acceptance approves the plan content, not execution: after acceptance, recommend the follow-on path that fits the work's shape — ultrawork durable checkpoints for progress that must survive sessions as a checkpointed ledger, ultrawork coordinated lanes for an accepted plan split into disjoint parallel lanes, ultrawork single-owner persistence for one already-scoped task with a single owner, ultrawork for one bounded delivery cycle, or a direct selected executor/runtime handoff for a single prepared coding change — state the fit reason in one line, and start it only after the user's explicit go-ahead.
• Hermes' built-in /plan writes one plan file under .hermes/plans/ in a turn of its own that opens [/plan — plan mode] and executes nothing; in that turn, follow its instructions. When the user later asks to review, accept, or hand off that file, it is this skill's draft, not a reason to write a second plan: load references/hermes-plan-mode.md.

Handoff policy:

Keep planning in Hermes; if the accepted plan requires code edits, prepare a selected executor/runtime handoff after acceptance, and start a follow-on workflow engine only after the user explicitly confirms the recommended path.

Required inputs:

• requirements
• constraints
• known facts
• non-goals

Expected outputs:

• plan
• acceptance criteria
• verification strategy

Artifact expectations:

• plan artifact when durable execution will follow

Safety rules:

• Do not imply hidden Hermes runtime behavior.
• Use the smallest verification that can prove the claim.

Runtime Evidence

Preferred harness for this skill: planning.

omh runtime record --skill plan --harness planning --status started

Record observed delegation results; otherwise return not_available or not_observed. Prepared OMH routing is not execution, review, CI, merge-readiness, or merge evidence.

• When wrapper metadata includes memory_review_card/v1 or handoff_context_pack/v1, treat it as reviewed OMH-local or wrapper-supplied context only. Use conflict-free context summaries to shape plans and handoffs, but do not claim Hermes internal memory was read or changed. Preserve workflow intent and stop conditions; verify before claiming completion. Reply in the user's own words and the host's own voice: its SOUL.md persona owns reply language, tone, speech level, and sentence endings, progress updates included (where it sets no language, use the one the user wrote in), and OMH shapes structure and content only; OMH's record terms (surface, lane, wrapper, handoff, evidence boundary, not_observed) stay in records and tool calls, never in the sentence the user reads unless they ask about one; and when a stop condition or a decision the user owns ends the turn, offer the next action as a question rather than declaring what will not be done.

Use Hermes-native subagent/delegation features when available: native subagents -> Hermes delegation when available, otherwise sequential lanes.

Shared product, compatibility, topology, memory, harness, and execution rules: skill_view(name='omh-routing', file_path='references/skill-common-rail.md'). Load it when applicable; otherwise name an unavailable capability.