writing-plans

To turn a design spec into an implementation plan, you map the spec's success criteria to specific files, decompose the work into actionable tasks, and define TDD verification steps. This ensures the resulting plan is executable and traceable back to the original requirements.

The best way to plan multi-file feature development is by anchoring the workflow to a governing spec. This involves mapping out required file changes, breaking down tasks, and establishing test-driven development steps to ensure coordinated implementation across all affected files.

You link acceptance criteria to development tasks by enforcing governance during planning. The process extracts success criteria directly from the governing spec and uses them as acceptance benchmarks for each decomposed task in the generated formal plan document.

Yes, spec-driven planning works seamlessly with TDD workflows. The planning process automatically generates test-driven development verification steps for each task, ensuring that test coverage is planned alongside the implementation to validate the spec's success criteria.

To track the implementation log after generating a project plan, the workflow automatically records the plan generation event and updates the governing spec's Implementation Log. The formal plan document itself is saved directly to the .claude/plans directory for future reference.

You need to generate a formal plan document when a multi-file feature requires coordinated planning, spec-driven acceptance criteria, and traceable coverage from plan to implementation. This prevents ambiguity by providing a clear, executable roadmap for the team.