planning-with-files_skill

Overview

This skill implements a Manus-style file-based planning workflow to manage complex, multi-step tasks. It automatically creates and maintains task_plan.md, findings.md, and progress.md so important context is persisted to disk. Use it to structure long-running work, coordinate research, and avoid lost context across many tool calls.

How this skill works

On start, the skill creates three markdown files and seeds them with templates. During execution it writes decisions, discoveries, and session logs to the appropriate files whenever key events occur. It enforces rules like creating the plan first, saving findings after every two information-gathering actions, and logging all errors to drive iterative fixes.

When to use it

• Starting a multi-step project with 3+ phases or many tool calls
• Conducting research that produces discoverable artifacts and notes
• Building or integrating systems where progress must be auditable
• Tasks expected to span multiple sessions or collaborators
• Any workflow where losing intermediate context would be costly

Best practices

• Always create task_plan.md before taking major actions
• Save discoveries to findings.md after every two view/search operations
• Read task_plan.md before making major decisions or changing direction
• Log every error, attempt, and result to progress.md and task_plan.md
• Follow the 3-strike protocol: diagnose, try alternatives, then rethink

Example use cases

• Researching and drafting a technical whitepaper across multiple sessions
• Coordinating a multi-step engineering task with build/test cycles and error handling
• Running a long investigative workflow that requires collecting sources and notes
• Developing a feature that requires iterative trials, logs, and decision checkpoints
• Managing a cross-team project where persistent artifacts support handoffs