compound-engineering-plugin-mirror/skills/lfg/references/plan-brief.md

Step 1: artifact root and settled-decisions brief (LFG)

Artifact root

Resolve <root> when you first compose a <root>/ path, never before you need it. LFG composes one: the <root>/plans/ location step 1's gate checks the plan was written to. A run that stops before that gate — a routing-carrier blocker, a non-software plan report — never composes a <root>/ path and never resolves a root.

Resolve the CE artifact root <root> before composing any artifact path.

• Read docs_root from <repo-root>/.compound-engineering/config.yaml only (<repo-root> = git rev-parse --show-toplevel). Do not read it from config.local.yaml. Unset -> <root> is docs, exactly as before.
• Validate a set value: a repo-relative directory whose real, symlink-resolved path stays inside the repo and is neither the repo root nor under .git/. Otherwise stop with an error naming docs_root and the value -- never fall back to docs.
• Use <root> as the sole artifact location: create it if absent, compose each path as <root>/<subdir> with this skill's own subdirectory, and never also read docs.

Readiness check

An explicit status: blocked return is terminal even when artifact_path names a readable plan. Preserve and report its artifact_path when present, phase, blocker, and recovery_path; do not use artifact presence to retry planning or advance to implementation.

The plan the gate checks is the path ce-plan reported writing this run. A file already under <root>/plans/ that ce-plan did not report — however closely it matches the feature — is not a written plan: a return with neither a blocker nor a reported path takes the single retry, never a stale artifact.

Read the plan metadata before continuing past step 1's gate. A plan carrying artifact_contract: ce-unified-plan/v1 proceeds only when it is artifact_readiness: implementation-ready with execution: code. Every other value stops the pipeline: artifact_readiness: requirements-only, any unrecognized readiness value, an invalid progress-like readiness value, and execution: knowledge-work. An output that is not an implementation plan at all — an approach plan, an answer-seeking or universal output — stops it too, whether or not it carries the contract marker.

Settled-decisions brief

Compose this brief from the invoking conversation and pass it with the sanitized feature request when you invoke ce-plan.

Contents: direction (1-2 lines); settled decisions, each with four required fields — the decision, its provenance class (user-directed or user-approved), the rejected alternative, and a one-line reason; open areas; and a standing report-conflicts line.

An entry whose rejected alternative cannot be stated demotes to a directive or open area. Scope topically — only decisions about the feature being shipped; when in doubt, demote (re-litigation is the safe floor; importing stale settlements is not). If the conversation contains no settled decisions, skip composition entirely and invoke ce-plan exactly as it is written in the body — no empty-brief ceremony.

The brief is transient: once ce-plan writes the plan, the plan's labeled KTDs are canonical. A step-1 retry reuses the composed brief verbatim — never recompose it.