plan-explore

Before planning, open-ended exploration surfaces questions, assumptions, and potential directions to help teams align on scope. Reading repository context like CLAUDE.md and .spec directories provides relevant insights without committing to implementation details.

Starting an exploratory planning session requires asking a thinking partner to surface questions, constraints, and options. It reads existing repository context and goals to propose when to create plans, specs, or tasks while avoiding auto-writing code.

Context-aware probing reads repository context, including CLAUDE.md and .spec directories, to surface relevant insights during project planning. This mechanism ensures exploratory sessions are grounded in your existing architecture and specifications rather than operating in a vacuum.

Early exploration captures notes in .spec files or arch.md documents when needed during the session. This ensures surfaced design questions, assumptions, and potential directions are documented for future reference without automatically implementing code features.

Open-ended exploration should be avoided when you need immediate code implementation or feature delivery rather than design alignment. This approach focuses on surfacing questions and capturing notes, intentionally avoiding writing code or implementing features.

Exploratory planning avoids writing code to maintain focus on surfacing design questions, constraints, and potential directions before implementation. This prevents premature commitment to specific solutions and ensures teams align on scope and goals first.