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stage-plan

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Stage: Plan

Canonical lifecycle stage: research, design, and decompose work into verified units — turning an approved specification into an ordered set of implementable, acceptance-checked tasks. Name kept in the re-derivation — “plan” is already framework-neutral. The specify activity (authoring the spec/PRD itself) was split out to stage-specify on the 2026-07-04 ingest; one candidate (design) remains parked (see Split candidates).

Derived projection — evidence is the capabilities that implements: [[stage-plan]].

GSD:

Matt Pocock — Skills for Real Engineers:

Addy Osmani — Agent Skills:

Spec Kit:

BMAD:

Compound Engineering:

gstack (a persona plan-review panel, distinctive here — gstack reviews the plan in plan-mode rather than authoring a checklist):

Superpowers:

OpenSpec folds this in: openspec-propose emits artifact-design-md (design.md, the how) and artifact-plan-md (tasks.md, the numbered checklist) as part of the same one-step proposal that authors the spec — so its implements: edge points at stage-specify, but the design + task-decomposition work lands here. BMAD, by contrast, gives design its own Solutioning phase (architecture + decomposition), distinct from its Planning/specify phase.

Cross-framework equivalents

Six frameworks share the vertical-slice / decompose technique: Matt’s mp-to-tickets ↔ GSD’s gsd-plan-phase --mvp ↔ Addy’s addy-planning ↔ Spec Kit’s speckit-tasks ↔ BMAD’s bmad-create-epics-and-stories ↔ Superpowers’ sp-writing-plans, clustered at pattern-vertical-slice — Superpowers’ is distinctive for the task granularity (each task is the smallest unit carrying its own test cycle) and for embedding the TDD steps directly in the plan. The plan-verification gate is now a five-framework cluster: GSD’s gsd-plan-checker ↔ Spec Kit’s speckit-analyze ↔ BMAD’s bmad-check-implementation-readiness ↔ Compound Engineering’s ce-doc-review ↔ gstack’s gstack-plan-eng-review (pattern-plan-verification-loop) — CE and gstack are distinctive in gating with a parallel persona fan-out (gstack-autoplan runs a whole review panel) rather than a single multi-dimension checker. On design granularity the frameworks diverge: GSD folds design into planning (the gsd-planner) and Addy folds it into the build phase (addy-api-design), while Matt breaks it out into dedicated mp-domain-modeling / mp-codebase-design skills and Spec Kit emits dedicated design artifacts (data-model.md + contracts/, the pattern-contract-first surface) within speckit-plan — same underlying activity, different placement (see the design split candidate below).

Split candidates

One candidate remains parked to split into its own canonical stage once ≥2 frameworks evidence the finer distinction as a distinct phase (per the re-derivation rules in CONVENTIONS.md). Review on every ingest.

Resolved 2026-07-04: stage-specify (author the spec/PRD) was promoted to a canonical stage — Addy’s addy-spec-driven-development became the second framework to treat spec authoring as its own step (with Matt’s mp-to-spec), clearing the bar. See stage-specify.

stage-design (design deep modules / architecture)

  • Distinction: design = shape module boundaries and interfaces; distinct from decompose into tasks.
  • Evidence so far (still borderline — one framework treats it as a distinct phase):
    • Matt Pocock splits it out pre-build: mp-domain-modeling + mp-codebase-design (pattern-deep-modules) are dedicated design skills in the plan/design stage.
    • Addy has a dedicated design skill too — addy-api-design (contract-first, pattern-contract-first) — but folds it into the Build phase rather than a distinct design step.
    • GSD folds it in: design happens inside gsd-planner.
    • OpenSpec has a dedicated design artifact — artifact-design-md (design.md) — as a discrete step in its proposal → specs → design → tasks chain (generated one-at-a-time by /opsx:continue in the expanded profile), but it is still an artifact inside openspec-propose, not a standalone lifecycle phase.
    • Spec Kit likewise emits dedicated design artifacts — data-model.md + contracts/ (the pattern-contract-first surface) — but within speckit-plan, not as a standalone phase.
    • BMAD has a dedicated architecture capability (bmad-architecture → artifact-architecture) and even a named Solutioning phase — but that phase bundles design with decomposition (bmad-create-epics-and-stories), so it isolates plan-as-a-whole as a phase, not design distinct from decomposition. So BMAD does not clear the finer distinction either.
    • So design is now a dedicated capability/artifact in five frameworks (MP splits it pre-build; Addy folds it into Build; OpenSpec and Spec Kit make it discrete artifacts within propose/plan; BMAD gives it a capability inside Solutioning), but a distinct phase, isolated from task decomposition, in only one (MP). Strengthening, still not decisive.
  • Decisive trigger: a framework that treats design as its own lifecycle phase distinct from task decomposition (not folded into plan, propose, build, or a design+decompose solutioning phase) → clears the bar → split into stage-design.

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