planning-with-files

Persistent planning artifacts store your multi-step workflows in Markdown files. By automatically creating and updating task_plan.md, findings.md, and progress.md, this approach tracks goals and session logs outside volatile memory to prevent context loss.

Session recovery works by re-reading existing Markdown planning files like task_plan.md and progress.md. This restores focus and automatically recovers the exact project planning state before making iterative cross-phase decisions.

Use persistent Markdown files for task management when handling complex projects or research tasks requiring five or more tool calls. This approach supports extensive cross-phase coordination and iterative decision-making across long multi-step work.

Structure multi-phase research tasks by creating a task_plan.md to outline your phases. You then use findings.md and progress.md to log discoveries and track completion, ensuring structured workflow coordination across iterative tool interactions.

A limitation of using Markdown files for context management is the added overhead for simple tasks. The structured workflow targets complex multi-step projects requiring cross-phase coordination, making it less suitable for lightweight or short operations.