planners

Tools for managing plain-text plans with a documented schema, CLI commands, and an installable skillstub. It is designed to automate the mechanical components of generating and updating plain-text plans with standardized frontmatter for a given project. To facilitate tracking and reviewing plans, it also automatically generates and maintains an index table of all existing plans and their statuses.

These tools can be used manually via CLI commands, but they are largely intended to be used in conjunction with a language model. To guide usage by a language model, it ships with built-in skills and rules that offer an opinionated approach to managing the full plan-file lifecycle and automating usage of this package. These skills and rules can be installed on your system via the CLI commands listed in the instructions below. Once installed, the rules will enforce conventions around how plan files are named, filled, and updated, and the skills will facilitate the addition, implementation, and closing out of plans, which includes the use of git branches and worktrees as specified by the user. While its core functionality and plan files are model-agnostic, some aspects of its built-in support (e.g., the skill files, rule files, and pre-commit validation hook) are currently only available for use with Claude Code.

Getting Started

planners is designed to run as a global uv tool, but you can also install it as a per-project dependency.

1. Install the CLI as a uv tool (once per machine), so planners is on your PATH:

   uv tool install planners
   

   Or (re)install from GitHub:

   uv tool install --force git+https://github.com/gitronald/planners.git
   

2. Install the global rules and skills — This installs a global Claude Code rule file and a skills stub: the actual skills are included within this package and are accessible via the CLI; the skills stub just tells the model how to access them and allows you to use the skills via slash commands.

   planners install
   

   This will:

   • (Re)generate the global ~/.claude/skills/planners/SKILL.md holder and ~/.claude/rules/planners.md convention rule, which can change as the package version advances.
   • Wire the planners-validate pre-commit hook into the project folder/repo's .pre-commit-config.yaml (registering it when pre-commit is available).
   • Give the generated index its merge semantics: a .planners/README.md merge=union line in the repo's .gitattributes, so a local merge whose two sides both added or closed plans stops conflicting on it. union is built into git, so the one committed line is the whole fix — nothing to configure per clone. GitHub's server-side merge does not apply it, so a PR can still report a conflict on the index; merging the base in locally then resolves it without hand-editing a generated file.

   planners install --check reports each part (holder, rule, gitattr) and exits non-zero if any has drifted, plus a hook line saying whether the git hook is actually registered in this clone — registration is per-clone state that a fresh clone silently lacks, so it is reported rather than assumed.

3. Start planning — scaffold your first plan using the add command.

   This can be done within a Claude Code terminal via the installed /planners skill and its add subcommand:

   /planners add my first feature
   

   Or via the CLI directly in your preferred terminal:

   planners add my-first-feature --title "My first feature"
   

   Either case will create a new plan file (.planners/plans/000-my-first-feature/plan.md) and refresh the index (.planners/README.md), though using the skill may produce a slightly different filename.

Usage

planners add <slug> --title "<Title>"    # scaffold a new plan (--defer: stage it unnumbered)
planners finalize                        # number and commit the deferred batch, in one commit
planners activate <NNN>                  # flip a plan to active, fill branch:, and commit
planners base                            # print the repo's mainline branch (--all: every one)
planners index .                         # regenerate .planners/README.md
planners validate .planners/plans        # validate plan frontmatter (and that the index agrees)
planners schema                          # show the plan metadata schema
planners skill <name>                    # print a bundled skill body
planners rule <name>                     # print a bundled convention rule body
planners install                         # install holder + rule + repo hook + merge attr (--local: per-repo)
planners permissions --level assist      # print an automation-level permission profile (--apply to write it)

Plan commits land on the mainline. add, finalize, and activate refuse to commit when HEAD is off it, so a plan is recorded on the mainline even if the feature branch never merges. The accepted set is dev (when that branch exists) plus the repo's default branch — planners base --all prints it. Detection reads git's current refs and goes inert rather than blocking a repo it can't resolve; --allow-branch overrides the refusal where the mainline isn't detectable by name.

Per-repo (local) mode. To pin planners as a project dependency instead of a global tool, add it with uv add --dev planners and run everything as uv run planners …; then planners install --local writes the holder and rule into the repo's own .claude/ rather than ~/.claude/.

Plans

Each plan is a directory under .planners/plans/ ({NNN}-{slug}/plan.md) and can carry scoped sidecar files. The generated .planners/README.md is the plans index, which GitHub auto-renders on folder browse.

Convention rule

planners install writes a version-stamped, auto-loaded ~/.claude/rules/planners.md (global) or .claude/rules/planners.md (per-repo). The rule is owned by the package — edit the convention in the package and reinstall; don't hand-edit the installed file. A hand-maintained plan-files.md is superseded by the generated planners.md (install warns, never deletes it).

See CHANGELOG.md for release notes.