Plan Review

Plan Review: Validate Execution Plans

Purpose

Review and validate execution plans before code changes begin, ensuring plans have clear acceptance criteria, appropriate critic assignments, and realistic scope.

When to Use

• After planner agent creates execution plan
• When user explicitly requests plan review
• Before high-stakes operations (configured in highStakesPatterns)

Validation Criteria

Completeness Checks

✓ Scope defined: Files, operations, and boundaries clear ✓ Success criteria present: At least 3 specific, measurable criteria ✓ Critic assignment: Each criterion mapped to responsible critic ✓ Retry budget set: Escalation path defined ✓ Cost estimate included: Token overhead calculated

Quality Gates

Acceptance criteria must be:

• Specific (not "good code" but "all tests pass, coverage >80%")
• Measurable (binary pass/fail, not subjective)
• Pre-declared (before execution, not emergent)
• Mapped to critics (clear veto authority assignment)

Domain-specific patterns:

• Financial: Must specify precision, rounding method, audit requirements
• Security: Must reference OWASP checklist, auth patterns
• Performance: Must define latency SLAs, memory limits

Review Process

1. Parse plan structure - Extract scope, criteria, critics, budget
2. Check completeness - Verify all required sections present
3. Validate criteria - Ensure specific and measurable
4. Verify critic mapping - Each criterion has responsible critic
5. Check domain patterns - Apply domain-specific requirements
6. Estimate feasibility - Scope appropriate for retry budget
7. Present findings - Show issues and recommendations

Example Reviews

Good Plan

EXECUTION PLAN ✓

Scope: Refactor auth to JWT ✓
Files: src/auth/*.ts ✓

SUCCESS CRITERIA: ✓
✓ All 18 existing tests pass (Code Critic validates)
✓ No OWASP Top 10 violations (Security Critic validates)
✓ Token storage uses httpOnly cookies (Security Critic validates)
✓ Token refresh handles 401 (Code Critic validates)
✓ Coverage maintains 85%+ (Code Critic validates)

Critics: code, security ✓
Budget: 6 iterations ✓
Cost: +40% tokens ($0.15) ✓

Plan Needs Improvement

EXECUTION PLAN ❌

Scope: Make the code better ❌ TOO VAGUE
Files: Not specified ❌ MISSING

SUCCESS CRITERIA: ❌
- Code should be high quality ❌ NOT MEASURABLE
- No bugs ❌ NOT SPECIFIC
- Fast performance ❌ NO THRESHOLD

Critics: None assigned ❌
Budget: Not set ❌

Required fixes:

1. Define specific scope and files
2. Make criteria measurable (e.g., "all tests pass", "latency <200ms")
3. Assign critics to each criterion
4. Set retry budget

Configuration

Plans automatically reviewed when autoVerify: true in settings.

For manual review, invoke explicitly after planning phase.

Additional Resources

• references/acceptance-criteria-patterns.md - Domain-specific criteria templates
• references/plan-examples.md - Good and bad plan examples