Planning with Files

Planning with Files is a skill that brings Manus-style persistent planning to Claude Code by maintaining structured markdown files as living task plans. Instead of keeping plans only in the conversation context where they get lost as the thread grows, this skill instructs the agent to create and continuously update a markdown planning document on disk.

When activated, the agent begins every complex task by writing a plan.md file (or similar) that breaks the work into numbered steps with checkboxes. As each step is completed, the agent updates the file to mark it done, add notes about decisions made, and adjust remaining steps based on what was learned. This creates an auditable trail of progress that survives context window limits and can be reviewed after the session ends.

The planning file follows a consistent structure: an objective statement at the top, a numbered task list with status indicators (pending, in-progress, done, blocked), notes on key decisions or findings, and a summary section updated upon completion. The agent re-reads the plan file before each major action to stay aligned with the overall goal, which is particularly valuable in long sessions where earlier context may be truncated.

This approach solves a fundamental problem with AI coding agents: they tend to lose track of multi-step goals in long conversations, skip steps, or repeat work. By externalizing the plan to a file, the agent has a reliable single source of truth that persists regardless of context window pressure.

The skill is especially effective for refactoring projects, multi-file feature implementations, migration tasks, and any work that spans more than a few steps. It pairs well with other skills that benefit from structured task tracking, and the resulting plan files serve as useful documentation of what was done and why.