Project Planning

Project Planning

Use this skill to turn a fresh project idea into a focused, MVP-first plan that favors prebuilt solutions and opinionated frameworks over custom complexity.

Workflow

1. Read references/project-planning.md.
2. Clarify the goal in one sentence and define the single-user MVP boundary: what ships in the first cut, what is explicitly out of scope.
3. Decompose the goal into a small set of manageable tasks. Group by user-visible outcome, not by layer.
4. Spawn subagents in parallel to research frameworks and libraries that could absorb whole tasks. Prefer pre-built solutions unless a clear constraint rules them out.
5. Start from an official scaffold or starter via bunx create-* (bunx create-next-app, bunx create-vite, bunx create-t3-app, bunx create-tanstack, bunx create-expo) instead of hand-rolling the project skeleton.
6. Before any dependency install in the new project, create or preserve bunfig.toml with [install] minimumReleaseAge = 259200. Prefer scaffold flags that skip the initial install, then run bun install.
7. Pick an opinionated framework (e.g. Next.js, TanStack Start) when it improves organization and removes wiring decisions. Skip framework-grade tooling for one-screen utilities. Ask the user which framework to use if unclear.
8. For UI, initialize shadcn/ui with bunx shadcn@latest init and choose a minimalist preset - prefer shadcn blocks, you can ask the user to pick. Pull in components on demand, not preemptively.
9. Lay out components and services in a logical, opinionated structure before any code is written.
10. Decide the minimum useful testing surface and the minimum useful git-hook surface. Both default to small.
11. Produce a short plan: goal, MVP scope, task list, stack choices with one-line rationale, deferred items.

Planning Rules

• Build for one user first.
• Use Bun as the runtime, package manager, and script runner by default.
• Start every new project from an official scaffold or template, invoked through bunx create-* (e.g. bunx create-next-app, bunx create-vite, bunx create-t3-app, bunx create-tanstack, bunx create-expo).
• Every Bun project must include a root bunfig.toml with minimumReleaseAge = 259200 under [install] before bun install or bun add resolves new packages.
• For UI, default to shadcn/ui with a minimalist preset. Add components with bunx shadcn@latest add <component> as they are actually needed.
• Prefer prebuilt over bespoke. Reach for a library, hosted service, or framework primitive before writing your own.
• Choose boring, well-documented defaults. Novelty is a cost, not a feature.
• Cut features before cutting clarity. If the MVP is too big, remove scope, do not compress the design.
• Pick one opinionated framework per project. Do not mix two routing or data layers.
• Organize by feature or domain, not by file type, once there is more than one screen.
• Write tests for critical logic and infrastructure: money, auth, data integrity, deploy paths. Skip tests for trivial glue and UI that will churn.
• Use git hooks for formatting and fast static checks. Do not run full test suites or type-checks on every commit.
• Defer anything that is not on the path to a working MVP: analytics, feature flags, advanced error reporting, premature abstractions.
• Re-evaluate the plan once the first end-to-end slice runs. Replan from evidence, not from the original guess.

Subagent Use

• Launch independent research subagents in parallel: one per framework or library question.
• Give each subagent a self-contained brief: the problem, constraints, what a good answer looks like, and a length cap.
• Ask for a recommendation plus the main tradeoff, not a survey of every option.
• Do not delegate the final decision. Synthesize subagent findings yourself before committing to a stack.