Pre-implementation plan audit stress-testing scope, assumptions, risks, and failure modes before code is written. Triggers on: "review this plan", "is this plan solid", "what am I missing", "challenge my assumptions", "stress-test this", "/plan-review".
Execute a structured pre-implementation audit of a technical plan, proposal, or design document. The goal is to surface risks, bad assumptions, missing pieces, and scope problems before any code is written — when course corrections are cheapest.
This skill is read-only. It never modifies code. It produces a severity-tagged review document with a final ship/rethink/reject verdict.
Ask the user a single question via AskUserQuestion:
Which review lens? (1) Product — scope, user impact, business alignment. (2) Engineering — architecture, failure modes, test strategy, performance. (3) Combined (default) — both lenses integrated.
Accept the answer and proceed. Do not ask follow-up configuration questions.
Also assess scope size from the plan:
Read the plan end-to-end. Produce a 2–3 sentence summary confirming understanding. Explicitly list:
If the summary is wrong, the user corrects it here before the rest of the review proceeds on a false foundation.
Extract every implicit assumption. For each one:
| Assumption | If wrong? | Supporting evidence | What falsifies it? |
|---|
Common assumption categories to probe:
For each component or subsystem in the plan, fill a failure mode table:
| Component | Failure Mode | Blast Radius | Recovery Strategy |
|---|
Additionally identify data flow shadow paths — side effects, async callbacks, event propagation, or cache invalidation chains that are not on the happy path but will execute in production.
Use ASCII diagrams to illustrate non-obvious data flow or failure propagation where the plan involves three or more interacting components.
For each major component, assess:
This section is language- and framework-agnostic. Reference
references/project-detection.md for framework-aware examples when the
user's stack is known.
Skip this section when running product-lens-only mode.
Skip this section when running engineering-lens-only mode.
How components connect to each other and to the outside world:
Things the plan does not address that it should:
Evaluate the proposed implementation order:
Deliver exactly one of:
| Verdict | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Ship | Plan is solid. Proceed as written. |
| Ship with changes | Viable, but specific modifications listed below are required before proceeding. |
| Rethink | Fundamental structural issues require re-planning. Itemize what must change. |
| Reject | Plan is not viable. Explain why and what alternative direction to consider. |
Include a one-paragraph rationale for the verdict.
For small-scope changes (single file, ~100 lines), deliver four sections