Pattern: Scale-adaptive planning

Size the ceremony to the work: a one-line fix skips straight to code, an enterprise system runs the full spec → architecture → epics → stories pipeline, and everything in between takes a proportionate middle path. Planning depth is a dial, not a fixed gate — “Choose your track based on planning needs, not story math.” This is bmad’s answer to the tension every spec-driven framework faces: rigour that helps big projects becomes dead weight on small ones.

BMAD expresses it two ways across its v6 line:

• Numeric Levels 0–4 (classic v6) — Single Atomic Change → Small Feature → Medium Project → Complex System → Enterprise Scale, each prescribing which artifacts exist (tech-spec only → PRD → PRD + architecture + just-in-time tech specs).
• Stakes-calibrated tracks (current v6) — Quick Flow (skip planning) / BMad Method (PRD + architecture + UX) / Enterprise (adds Security + DevOps). Solutioning is skipped, optional, or required per track.

A close relative is just-in-time design: the architecture spine fixes only invariants and defers concrete structure to the code, so detail is produced only when needed.

Applied by (backlinks)

BMAD:

• bmad-quick-dev — collapses the whole pipeline to a few turns for small, well-understood work.
• bmad-spec — the lightweight SPEC kernel used instead of a full PRD on the light track.
• bmad-architecture — the invariants-only spine (just-in-time design).

gstack:

• gstack-autoplan — smart review routing sizes the review ceremony to the change (CEO skips infra, design skips backend).

nano-spec:

• nano-spec-create — applies the pattern at the methodology level: rather than a dial inside one framework, nano-spec is a deliberate fixed middle tier on the no-spec → nano → full-spec (Kiro) ceremony spectrum, chosen because most work lives there. The dial is exercised by choosing nano-spec over the neighbours, not within it.

Agent OS:

• agent-os-plan-product · agent-os-shape-spec — lightweight-by-default docs, sized to the project; v3’s whole design is subtraction — it deleted its own scaffolding and delegates the heavy lifting to the harness’s Plan Mode (another methodology-level point on the ceremony spectrum, like nano-spec).

See Also

• pattern-spec-driven-development — the method whose ceremony this pattern modulates.
• pattern-vertical-slice — the unit of work the light tracks ship directly.
• bmad — the framework built on this pattern.