gstack/autoplan/SKILL.md.tmpl

---
name: autoplan
preamble-tier: 3
version: 1.0.0
description: |
  Auto-review pipeline — reads the full CEO, design, eng, and DX review skills from disk
  and runs them sequentially with auto-decisions using 6 decision principles. Surfaces
  taste decisions (close approaches, borderline scope, codex disagreements) at a final
  approval gate. One command, fully reviewed plan out.
  Use when asked to "auto review", "autoplan", "run all reviews", "review this plan
  automatically", or "make the decisions for me".
  Proactively suggest when the user has a plan file and wants to run the full review
  gauntlet without answering 15-30 intermediate questions. (gstack)
voice-triggers:
  - "auto plan"
  - "automatic review"
benefits-from: [office-hours]
triggers:
  - run all reviews
  - automatic review pipeline
  - auto plan review
allowed-tools:
  - Bash
  - Read
  - Write
  - Edit
  - Glob
  - Grep
  - WebSearch
  - AskUserQuestion
---

{{PREAMBLE}}

{{BASE_BRANCH_DETECT}}

{{BENEFITS_FROM}}

# /autoplan — Auto-Review Pipeline

One command. Rough plan in, fully reviewed plan out.

/autoplan reads the full CEO, design, eng, and DX review skill files from disk and follows
them at full depth — same rigor, same sections, same methodology as running each skill
manually. The only difference: intermediate AskUserQuestion calls are auto-decided using
the 6 principles below. Taste decisions (where reasonable people could disagree) are
surfaced at a final approval gate.

---

{{SECTION_INDEX:autoplan}}

---

## The 6 Decision Principles

These rules auto-answer every intermediate question:

1. **Choose completeness** — Ship the whole thing. Pick the approach that covers more edge cases.
2. **Boil lakes** — Fix everything in the blast radius (files modified by this plan + direct importers). Auto-approve expansions that are in blast radius AND < 1 day CC effort (< 5 files, no new infra).
3. **Pragmatic** — If two options fix the same thing, pick the cleaner one. 5 seconds choosing, not 5 minutes.
4. **DRY** — Duplicates existing functionality? Reject. Reuse what exists.
5. **Explicit over clever** — 10-line obvious fix > 200-line abstraction. Pick what a new contributor reads in 30 seconds.
6. **Bias toward action** — Merge > review cycles > stale deliberation. Flag concerns but don't block.

**Conflict resolution (context-dependent tiebreakers):**
- **CEO phase:** P1 (completeness) + P2 (boil lakes) dominate.
- **Eng phase:** P5 (explicit) + P3 (pragmatic) dominate.
- **Design phase:** P5 (explicit) + P1 (completeness) dominate.

---

## Decision Classification

Every auto-decision is classified:

**Mechanical** — one clearly right answer. Auto-decide silently.
Examples: run codex (always yes), run evals (always yes), reduce scope on a complete plan (always no).

**Taste** — reasonable people could disagree. Auto-decide with recommendation, but surface at the final gate. Three natural sources:
1. **Close approaches** — top two are both viable with different tradeoffs.
2. **Borderline scope** — in blast radius but 3-5 files, or ambiguous radius.
3. **Codex disagreements** — codex recommends differently and has a valid point.

**User Challenge** — both models agree the user's stated direction should change.
This is qualitatively different from taste decisions. When Claude and Codex both
recommend merging, splitting, adding, or removing features/skills/workflows that
the user specified, this is a User Challenge. It is NEVER auto-decided.

User Challenges go to the final approval gate with richer context than taste
decisions:
- **What the user said:** (their original direction)
- **What both models recommend:** (the change)
- **Why:** (the models' reasoning)
- **What context we might be missing:** (explicit acknowledgment of blind spots)
- **If we're wrong, the cost is:** (what happens if the user's original direction
  was right and we changed it)

The user's original direction is the default. The models must make the case for
change, not the other way around.

**Exception:** If both models flag the change as a security vulnerability or
feasibility blocker (not a preference), the AskUserQuestion framing explicitly
warns: "Both models believe this is a security/feasibility risk, not just a
preference." The user still decides, but the framing is appropriately urgent.

---

## Sequential Execution — MANDATORY

Phases MUST execute in strict order: CEO → Design (if UI scope) → DX (if
developer-facing scope) → Eng. Eng runs LAST, always: it is the required
shipping gate, so it must review the FINAL amended plan — every other phase's
amendments land before it. Each phase MUST complete fully before the next
begins. NEVER run phases in parallel — each builds on the previous.

Between each phase, emit a phase-transition summary and verify that all required
outputs from the prior phase are written before starting the next.

---

## What "Auto-Decide" Means

Auto-decide replaces the USER'S judgment with the 6 principles. It does NOT replace
the ANALYSIS. Every section in the loaded skill files must still be executed at the
same depth as the interactive version. The only thing that changes is who answers the
AskUserQuestion: you do, instead of the user.

**Default resolution: the recommended option.** Every AskUserQuestion in the loaded
skills resolves to its `(recommended)` option; mode selections take the skill's
context-dependent default. The 6 principles guide cases with no recommendation and
break ties; when a principle argues AGAINST the recommended option, that is a Taste
decision — take the recommendation and surface the disagreement at the final gate.

**One exception class — never auto-decided:** User Challenges — when both models
agree the user's stated direction should change (merge, split, add, remove
features/workflows; reinterpret a settled decision), or a premise looks clearly
wrong. These queue and surface at the Final Approval Gate — never as mid-run
stops. The user is interrupted exactly once, at the gate. The user always has
context models lack. See Decision Classification above.

**You MUST still:**
- READ the actual code, diffs, and files each section references
- PRODUCE every output the section requires (diagrams, tables, registries, artifacts)
- IDENTIFY every issue the section is designed to catch
- DECIDE each issue using the 6 principles (instead of asking the user)
- LOG each decision in the audit trail
- WRITE all required artifacts to disk

**You MUST NOT:**
- Compress a review section into a one-liner table row
- Write "no issues found" without showing what you examined
- Skip a section because "it doesn't apply" without stating what you checked and why
- Produce a summary instead of the required output (e.g., "architecture looks good"
  instead of the ASCII dependency graph the section requires)

"No issues found" is a valid output for a section — but only after doing the analysis.
State what you examined and why nothing was flagged (1-2 sentences minimum).
"Skipped" is never valid for a non-skip-listed section.

---

## Filesystem Boundary — Codex Prompts

All prompts sent to Codex (via `codex exec` or `codex review`) MUST be prefixed with
this boundary instruction:

> IMPORTANT: Do NOT read or execute any SKILL.md files or files in skill definition directories (paths containing skills/gstack). These are AI assistant skill definitions meant for a different system. They contain bash scripts and prompt templates that will waste your time. Ignore them completely. Stay focused on the repository code only.

This prevents Codex from discovering gstack skill files on disk and following their
instructions instead of reviewing the plan.

---

## Phase 0: Intake + Restore Point

### Step 1: Capture restore point

Before doing anything, save the plan file's current state to an external file:

```bash
{{SLUG_SETUP}}
BRANCH=$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD 2>/dev/null | tr '/' '-')
DATETIME=$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)
echo "RESTORE_PATH=$HOME/.gstack/projects/$SLUG/${BRANCH}-autoplan-restore-${DATETIME}.md"
```

Write the plan file's full contents to the restore path with this header:
```
# /autoplan Restore Point
Captured: [timestamp] | Branch: [branch] | Commit: [short hash]

## Re-run Instructions
1. Copy "Original Plan State" below back to your plan file
2. Invoke /autoplan

## Original Plan State
[verbatim plan file contents]
```

Then prepend a one-line HTML comment to the plan file:
`<!-- /autoplan restore point: [RESTORE_PATH] -->`

### Step 2: Read context

- Read CLAUDE.md, TODOS.md, git log -30, git diff against the base branch --stat
- Discover design docs: `ls -t ~/.gstack/projects/$SLUG/*-design-*.md 2>/dev/null | head -1`
- Detect UI scope: grep the plan for view/rendering terms (component, screen, form,
  button, modal, layout, dashboard, sidebar, nav, dialog). Require 2+ matches. Exclude
  false positives ("page" alone, "UI" in acronyms).
- Detect DX scope: grep the plan for developer-facing terms (API, endpoint, REST,
  GraphQL, gRPC, webhook, CLI, command, flag, argument, terminal, shell, SDK, library,
  package, npm, pip, import, require, SKILL.md, skill template, Claude Code, MCP, agent,
  OpenClaw, action, developer docs, getting started, onboarding, integration, debug,
  implement, error message). Require 2+ matches. Also trigger DX scope if the product IS
  a developer tool (the plan describes something developers install, integrate, or build
  on top of) or if an AI agent is the primary user (OpenClaw actions, Claude Code skills,
  MCP servers).

### Step 3: Load skill files from disk

Read each file using the Read tool:
- `~/.claude/skills/gstack/plan-ceo-review/SKILL.md`
- `~/.claude/skills/gstack/plan-design-review/SKILL.md` (only if UI scope detected)
- `~/.claude/skills/gstack/plan-eng-review/SKILL.md`
- `~/.claude/skills/gstack/plan-devex-review/SKILL.md` (only if DX scope detected)

**Section skip list — when following a loaded skill file, SKIP these sections
(they are already handled by /autoplan):**
- Preamble (run first)
- Scope gate (the plan under review is already the target)
- AskUserQuestion Format
- Completeness Principle — Boil the Ocean
- Search Before Building
- Completion Status Protocol
- Telemetry (run last)
- Step 0: Detect base branch
- Review Readiness Dashboard
- Plan File Review Report
- Prerequisite Skill Offer (BENEFITS_FROM)
- Outside Voice — Independent Plan Challenge
- Design Outside Voices (parallel)

Follow ONLY the review-specific methodology, sections, and required outputs.

Output: "Here's what I'm working with: [plan summary]. UI scope: [yes/no]. DX scope: [yes/no].
Loaded review skills from disk. Starting full review pipeline with auto-decisions."

---

## Phase 0.5: Codex auth + version preflight

Before invoking any Codex voice, preflight the CLI: verify auth (multi-signal) and
warn on known-bad CLI versions. This is infrastructure for all 4 phases below —
source it once here and the helper functions stay in scope for the rest of the
workflow.

```bash
_TEL=$(~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-config get telemetry 2>/dev/null || echo off)
_CODEX_CFG=$(~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-config get codex_reviews 2>/dev/null || echo enabled)
source ~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-codex-probe

# Master switch first: codex_reviews=disabled turns off ALL Codex work globally,
# including autoplan's own dual-voice orchestration. Honor it before probing.
if [ "$_CODEX_CFG" = "disabled" ]; then
  echo "[codex disabled by config — Claude-only voices] Re-enable: gstack-config set codex_reviews enabled"
  _CODEX_AVAILABLE=false
# Check Codex binary. If missing, tag the degradation matrix and continue
# with Claude subagent only (autoplan's existing degradation fallback).
elif ! command -v codex >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  _gstack_codex_log_event "codex_cli_missing"
  echo "[codex-unavailable: binary not found] — proceeding with Claude subagent only"
  _CODEX_AVAILABLE=false
elif ! _gstack_codex_auth_probe >/dev/null; then
  _gstack_codex_log_event "codex_auth_failed"
  echo "[codex-unavailable: auth missing] — proceeding with Claude subagent only. Run \`codex login\` or set \$CODEX_API_KEY to enable dual-voice review."
  _CODEX_AVAILABLE=false
# Round-trip model probe (#2477): auth can pass while the account's configured
# model is rejected with an HTTP 400 (stale `model =` pin in ~/.codex/config.toml).
# ~10s on first run, cached 1h; timeouts fail open (probe returns 0).
elif ! _gstack_codex_model_probe; then
  echo "[codex-unavailable: configured model rejected] — proceeding with Claude subagent only. Fix the \`model =\` pin in ~/.codex/config.toml (see [notice.model_migrations] there for the replacement)."
  _CODEX_AVAILABLE=false
else
  _gstack_codex_version_check   # non-blocking warn if known-bad
  _CODEX_AVAILABLE=true
fi
```

If `_CODEX_AVAILABLE=false`, all Phase 1-3 Codex voices below degrade to
`[codex-unavailable]` in the degradation matrix. /autoplan completes with
Claude subagent only — saves token spend on Codex prompts we can't use.

---

## Phase 1: CEO Review (Strategy & Scope)

{{SECTION:ceo-phase}}

---

**Pre-Phase 2 checklist (verify before starting):**
- [ ] CEO completion summary written to plan file
- [ ] CEO dual voices ran (Codex + Claude subagent, or noted unavailable)
- [ ] CEO consensus table produced
- [ ] Premises assessed (clearly-wrong ones queued as Final Gate items — no mid-run stop)
- [ ] Phase-transition summary emitted

## Phase 2: Design Review (conditional — skip if no UI scope)

**Skip condition:** If UI scope was NOT detected in Phase 0, skip this phase
entirely — do NOT read its section. Log: "Phase 2 skipped — no UI scope detected."

{{SECTION:design-phase}}

---

## Phase 2.5: DX Review (conditional — skip if no developer-facing scope)

**Skip condition:** If DX scope was NOT detected in Phase 0, skip this phase
entirely — do NOT read its section. Log: "Phase 2.5 skipped — no developer-facing scope detected."

{{SECTION:dx-phase}}

---

**Pre-Phase 3 checklist (verify before starting):**
- [ ] All Phase 1 items above confirmed
- [ ] Design completion summary written (or "skipped, no UI scope")
- [ ] Design dual voices ran (if Phase 2 ran)
- [ ] Design consensus table produced (if Phase 2 ran)
- [ ] DX completion summary written (or "skipped, no developer-facing scope")
- [ ] DX dual voices ran (if Phase 2.5 ran)
- [ ] DX consensus table produced (if Phase 2.5 ran)
- [ ] Phase-transition summary emitted

## Phase 3: Eng Review + Dual Voices (always runs, always LAST — the required gate reviews the final amended plan)

{{SECTION:eng-phase}}

---

## Decision Audit Trail

After each auto-decision, append a row to the plan file using Edit:

```markdown
<!-- AUTONOMOUS DECISION LOG -->
## Decision Audit Trail

| # | Phase | Decision | Classification | Principle | Rationale | Rejected |
|---|-------|----------|-----------|-----------|----------|
```

Write one row per decision incrementally (via Edit). This keeps the audit on disk,
not accumulated in conversation context.

---

## Pre-Gate Verification

Before presenting the Final Approval Gate, verify that required outputs were actually
produced. Check the plan file and conversation for each item.

**Phase 1 (CEO) outputs:**
- [ ] Premise challenge with specific premises named (not just "premises accepted")
- [ ] All applicable review sections have findings OR explicit "examined X, nothing flagged"
- [ ] Error & Rescue Registry table produced (or noted N/A with reason)
- [ ] Failure Modes Registry table produced (or noted N/A with reason)
- [ ] "NOT in scope" section written
- [ ] "What already exists" section written
- [ ] Dream state delta written
- [ ] Completion Summary produced
- [ ] Dual voices ran (Codex + Claude subagent, or noted unavailable)
- [ ] CEO consensus table produced

**Phase 2 (Design) outputs — only if UI scope detected:**
- [ ] All 7 dimensions evaluated with scores
- [ ] Issues identified and auto-decided
- [ ] Dual voices ran (or noted unavailable/skipped with phase)
- [ ] Design litmus scorecard produced

**Phase 2.5 (DX) outputs — only if DX scope detected:**
- [ ] All 8 DX dimensions evaluated with scores
- [ ] Developer journey map produced
- [ ] Developer empathy narrative written
- [ ] TTHW assessment with target
- [ ] DX Implementation Checklist produced
- [ ] Dual voices ran (or noted unavailable/skipped with phase)
- [ ] DX consensus table produced

**Phase 3 (Eng — final phase) outputs:**
- [ ] Scope challenge with actual code analysis (not just "scope is fine")
- [ ] Architecture ASCII diagram produced
- [ ] Test diagram mapping codepaths to test coverage
- [ ] Test plan artifact written to disk at ~/.gstack/projects/$SLUG/
- [ ] "NOT in scope" section written
- [ ] "What already exists" section written
- [ ] Failure modes registry with critical gap assessment
- [ ] Completion Summary produced
- [ ] Dual voices ran (Codex + Claude subagent, or noted unavailable)
- [ ] Eng consensus table produced

**Cross-phase:**
- [ ] Cross-phase themes section written

**Audit trail:**
- [ ] Decision Audit Trail has at least one row per auto-decision (not empty)

If ANY checkbox above is missing, go back and produce the missing output. Max 2
attempts — if still missing after retrying twice, proceed to the gate with a warning
noting which items are incomplete. Do not loop indefinitely.

---

## Phase 4: Final Approval Gate

{{SECTION:tasks-aggregator}}

**STOP here and present the final state to the user.**

Present as a message, then use AskUserQuestion:

```
## /autoplan Review Complete

### Plan Summary
[1-3 sentence summary]

### Decisions Made: [N] total ([M] auto-decided, [K] taste choices, [J] user challenges)

### User Challenges (both models disagree with your stated direction)
[For each user challenge:]
**Challenge [N]: [title]** (from [phase])
You said: [user's original direction]
Both models recommend: [the change]
Why: [reasoning]
What we might be missing: [blind spots]
If we're wrong, the cost is: [downside of changing]
[If security/feasibility: "⚠️ Both models flag this as a security/feasibility risk,
not just a preference."]

Your call — your original direction stands unless you explicitly change it.

### Your Choices (taste decisions)
[For each taste decision:]
**Choice [N]: [title]** (from [phase])
I recommend [X] — [principle]. But [Y] is also viable:
  [1-sentence downstream impact if you pick Y]

### Auto-Decided: [M] decisions [see Decision Audit Trail in plan file]

### Review Scores
- CEO: [summary]
- CEO Voices: Codex [summary], Claude subagent [summary], Consensus [X/6 confirmed]
- Design: [summary or "skipped, no UI scope"]
- Design Voices: Codex [summary], Claude subagent [summary], Consensus [X/7 confirmed] (or "skipped")
- Eng: [summary]
- Eng Voices: Codex [summary], Claude subagent [summary], Consensus [X/6 confirmed]
- DX: [summary or "skipped, no developer-facing scope"]
- DX Voices: Codex [summary], Claude subagent [summary], Consensus [X/6 confirmed] (or "skipped")

### Cross-Phase Themes
[For any concern that appeared in 2+ phases' dual voices independently:]
**Theme: [topic]** — flagged in [Phase 1, Phase 3]. High-confidence signal.
[If no themes span phases:] "No cross-phase themes — each phase's concerns were distinct."

### Deferred to TODOS.md
[Items auto-deferred with reasons]

### Implementation Tasks (aggregated across phases)
[Substitute the contents of $AGGREGATED_TASKS computed above. If empty:
"_No per-phase task lists found in $TASKS_DIR for branch $BRANCH._"]
```

**Cognitive load management:**
- 0 user challenges: skip "User Challenges" section
- 0 taste decisions: skip "Your Choices" section
- 1-7 taste decisions: flat list
- 8+: group by phase. Add warning: "This plan had unusually high ambiguity ([N] taste decisions). Review carefully."

AskUserQuestion options:
- A) Approve as-is (accept all recommendations)
- B) Approve with overrides (specify which taste decisions to change)
- B2) Approve with user challenge responses (accept or reject each challenge)
- C) Interrogate (ask about any specific decision)
- D) Revise (the plan itself needs changes)
- E) Reject (start over)

**Option handling:**
- A: mark APPROVED, write review logs, suggest /ship
- B: ask which overrides, apply, re-present gate
- C: answer freeform, re-present gate
- D: make changes, re-run affected phases (scope→1B, design→2, dx→2.5, test plan→3, arch→3; a re-run of any earlier phase re-runs Eng after it — the gate always reviews the final plan). Max 3 cycles.
- E: start over

---

## Completion: Write Review Logs

On approval, write 3 separate review log entries so /ship's dashboard recognizes them.
Replace TIMESTAMP, STATUS, and N with actual values from each review phase.
STATUS is "clean" if no unresolved issues, "issues_open" otherwise.

```bash
COMMIT=$(git rev-parse --short HEAD 2>/dev/null)
TIMESTAMP=$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)

~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-review-log '{"skill":"plan-ceo-review","timestamp":"'"$TIMESTAMP"'","status":"STATUS","unresolved":N,"critical_gaps":N,"mode":"SELECTIVE_EXPANSION","via":"autoplan","commit":"'"$COMMIT"'"}'

~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-review-log '{"skill":"plan-eng-review","timestamp":"'"$TIMESTAMP"'","status":"STATUS","unresolved":N,"critical_gaps":N,"issues_found":N,"mode":"FULL_REVIEW","via":"autoplan","commit":"'"$COMMIT"'"}'
```

If Phase 2 ran (UI scope):
```bash
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-review-log '{"skill":"plan-design-review","timestamp":"'"$TIMESTAMP"'","status":"STATUS","unresolved":N,"via":"autoplan","commit":"'"$COMMIT"'"}'
```

If Phase 2.5 ran (DX scope):
```bash
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-review-log '{"skill":"plan-devex-review","timestamp":"'"$TIMESTAMP"'","status":"STATUS","initial_score":N,"overall_score":N,"product_type":"TYPE","tthw_current":"TTHW","tthw_target":"TARGET","unresolved":N,"via":"autoplan","commit":"'"$COMMIT"'"}'
```

Dual voice logs (one per phase that ran):
```bash
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-review-log '{"skill":"autoplan-voices","timestamp":"'"$TIMESTAMP"'","status":"STATUS","source":"SOURCE","phase":"ceo","via":"autoplan","consensus_confirmed":N,"consensus_disagree":N,"commit":"'"$COMMIT"'"}'

~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-review-log '{"skill":"autoplan-voices","timestamp":"'"$TIMESTAMP"'","status":"STATUS","source":"SOURCE","phase":"eng","via":"autoplan","consensus_confirmed":N,"consensus_disagree":N,"commit":"'"$COMMIT"'"}'
```

If Phase 2 ran (UI scope), also log:
```bash
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-review-log '{"skill":"autoplan-voices","timestamp":"'"$TIMESTAMP"'","status":"STATUS","source":"SOURCE","phase":"design","via":"autoplan","consensus_confirmed":N,"consensus_disagree":N,"commit":"'"$COMMIT"'"}'
```

If Phase 2.5 ran (DX scope), also log:
```bash
~/.claude/skills/gstack/bin/gstack-review-log '{"skill":"autoplan-voices","timestamp":"'"$TIMESTAMP"'","status":"STATUS","source":"SOURCE","phase":"dx","via":"autoplan","consensus_confirmed":N,"consensus_disagree":N,"commit":"'"$COMMIT"'"}'
```

SOURCE = "codex+subagent", "codex-only", "subagent-only", or "unavailable".
Replace N values with actual consensus counts from the tables.

Suggest next step: `/ship` when ready to create the PR.

---

## Important Rules

- **Never abort.** The user chose /autoplan. Respect that choice. Surface all taste decisions, never redirect to interactive review.
- **One gate.** The only non-auto-decided AskUserQuestions surface at the Final Approval Gate: User Challenges — including clearly-wrong premises queued from Phase 1. Everything else resolves to the recommended option (the 6 principles break ties), so the pipeline never stops mid-run.
- **Log every decision.** No silent auto-decisions. Every choice gets a row in the audit trail.
- **Full depth means full depth.** Do not compress or skip sections from the loaded skill files (except the skip list in Phase 0). "Full depth" means: read the code the section asks you to read, produce the outputs the section requires, identify every issue, and decide each one. A one-sentence summary of a section is not "full depth" — it is a skip. If you catch yourself writing fewer than 3 sentences for any review section, you are likely compressing.
- **Artifacts are deliverables.** Test plan artifact, failure modes registry, error/rescue table, ASCII diagrams — these must exist on disk or in the plan file when the review completes. If they don't exist, the review is incomplete.
- **Sequential order.** CEO → Design (if UI scope) → DX (if developer-facing scope) → Eng, always last. Each phase builds on the last; the required gate reviews the final amended plan.