/visual-plans

name: visual-plan
description: >-
  Turn ordinary text plans into rich interactive visual plans with diagrams,
  file maps, annotated code, open questions, and UI/prototype review when
  useful.
metadata:
  visibility: exported

Agent-Native Plans

Agent-Native Plans is structured visual planning mode for coding agents. Build the plan you would normally write in Markdown, but as a scannable document with editable blocks mixed in: inline diagrams, code snippets, open questions, and an optional top visual review area (wireframe canvas, live prototype, or both in tabs). Architecture and backend plans stay document-only; UI and product plans start with the top canvas/prototype (the Visual Surface Choice section owns that rule).

`/visual-plan` is the packaged command and main entry point. Choose the review mode from the task: UI-first when the work is primarily product UI and review should start with screens, prototype-first when review should start with a functional live prototype, design-first when review needs full-fidelity branded screens, or visual-intake when the user explicitly wants a questionnaire before planning. When a Codex, Claude Code, Markdown, or pasted plan already exists, `/visual-plan` uses that source plan as the starting point and builds the review surface from it instead of starting over.

When To Use

Create or adapt a visual plan whenever the plan would be better as a reviewable artifact than a chat paragraph. This includes modest work such as a single UI surface with states, a small workflow, a before/after product change, or a component/API/data-shape decision that needs alignment, plus larger multi-file, ambiguous, long-running, risky, or UI-heavy work. Use it when architecture / data flow / UI direction / options / open questions would benefit from inline diagrams or structured blocks, when the user needs to react to a direction before you implement, or when an existing text plan needs a richer review surface.

Plan Discipline

• **Gate thoughtfully.** A visual plan is a richer review surface, not only a

tool for giant projects. Use it when the user needs to see, compare, comment on, or approve a direction before code, even for a modest UI/state/workflow change. Skip it for truly trivial, unambiguous work — typos, one-line fixes, a single well-specified function, anything whose diff you could describe in one sentence — and just make the change. Never pad a plan with filler and never ship a single-step plan.

• **Research before you draft.** Read the real files, actions, schema, and

patterns first; name actual files, symbols, and data shapes instead of inventing them. Check existing `actions/` before proposing endpoints and prefer named client helpers over raw fetch. Delegate wide exploration to a sub-agent. Lead with reuse: for each step, name what it reuses — existing actions, schema, components, helpers — before what it adds, so the plan explains the genuinely new delta instead of redescribing what already exists.

• **Decide the hard-to-reverse bets first.** For non-trivial backend, data, or API

work, sketch where the feature is headed, then call out the decisions that are expensive to undo once data or callers depend on them — wire format, public ids, data-model shape, auth and ownership boundaries — and get those right in the plan even if most of the feature ships later. Then scope to the smallest first cut that proves the approach without foreclosing it, stating both what is in and what is explicitly deferred.

• **Keep examples at the right altitude.** When the user's idea is a broad

framework, product, or operating-model change, do not collapse it into the first concrete example, provider, or sync path they mention. Separate the core abstraction from motivating examples and app/provider adapters. Use examples to make the plan legible, but label them as examples unless they are the whole requested scope.

• **Publish standalone plans.** If the user pasted, referenced, or already has a

Codex / Claude Code / Markdown plan, treat it as source material, but rewrite the published plan as a clean standalone proposal. Preserve the source plan's useful intent and codebase facts, label inferred visuals as inferred, and avoid revision language such as "preserve the prior plan", "do not drop the old idea", "unlike the previous version", or "this revision changes...". A reader who never saw the chat or earlier drafts should understand the plan.

• **Make the first read concrete.** If the plan is meant to be shared with

someone outside the chat, or if the concept is abstract, lead near the top with one concrete product example before mode tables, architecture, or roadmaps. For UI-capable concepts, that usually means a top-canvas app state that shows the real user workflow in product terms. Do not rely on phrases that only make sense in conversation, and do not frame the plan as "not the old idea"; state the positive model directly.

• **Planning is read-only.** Make no source edits while building or reviewing the

plan. Start editing only after the user approves the direction.

• **Clarify vs. assume.** Do not ask how to build it — explore and present the

approach and options in the plan. Ask a clarifying question only when an ambiguity would change the design and you cannot resolve it from the code; use the host agent's normal ask-user-question flow and batch 2-4 high-leverage questions before finalizing. Do not call `create-visual-questions` for ordinary clarification or preflight; reserve it for the visual-intake mode when the user explicitly asks for a visual intake questionnaire. Otherwise state the assumption explicitly and proceed, and keep anything unresolved in the plan's single bottom `question-form` Open Questions block. For complex plans, do a final open-question pass before handoff: if a decision would affect architecture, scope, UX, data shape, or rollout, e