HARD GATE — Before running planning skills, confirm the epic capsule exists and the active story is clear. Planning without a target is noise.

Role: DISCOVER-PHASE ADVANCER — orchestrates the discover-phase sequence; hands off to the scope-work → slice-tasks → plan-work spine for implementation planning.

Updates specs/planning-status.yaml as discover-phase skills complete. This is NOT a duplicate of plan-work — it orchestrates the pre-coding discovery phase only (Discover phase in the 6-phase PMBOK lifecycle), handing off to the planning spine for implementation detail.

• Starting a brand-new feature or initiative with no prior planning artifacts
• Returning to a stalled initiative and needing to resume the discovery workflow
• After orchestrate-project hands off to the Discover phase
• When a new epic emerges from change-request and needs to go through full discovery

• Does specs/planning-status.yaml exist? If not, create it with the default workflow keys.
• Does specs/state.yaml have active_flow: planning? Set it if not already.
• Is the epic identified in release-plan.yaml? The epic must exist before discovery begins.

• survey-context → scope-work → research-first → elaborate-spec (optional) → plan-release → slice-tasks

Each key maps to a skill invocation. Optional keys can be skipped; required keys must complete before the phase advances.

1. Read state — Read specs/planning-status.yaml and specs/state.yaml. Understand where discovery stands: which workflow keys are done, which are pending, and which are optional (can be skipped).

2. Find next step — Find the first workflow key with status: pending. If the key is optional, check if the user wants to run it. If not, mark it skipped.

2a. Context capsule check — Before invoking elaborate-spec, check whether a fresh specs/planning-context.yaml exists:

test -f specs/planning-context.yaml && python3 -c "
import yaml, datetime
d = yaml.safe_load(open('specs/planning-context.yaml'))
written = d.get('written_at','')
if written:
 age = (datetime.datetime.now(datetime.timezone.utc) - datetime.datetime.fromisoformat(written)).total_seconds() / 3600
 print(f'Context age: {age:.1f}h')
" 2>/dev/null || echo "No context or no written_at"

• If context is < 24h old, ask: "Planning context from Xh ago exists for '<feature_name>'. Re-run elaborate-spec? [y/N]". Skip elaborate-spec on N.
• If context is ≥ 24h old or absent, run elaborate-spec normally.
• On planning cycle completion (all required keys done), clear the capsule: delete specs/planning-context.yaml and set planning-status.yaml context_capsule: null.

3. Invoke the matching skill — Run the skill that matches the workflow key:

   • survey-context — where are we?
   • scope-work — what’s in and out?
   • research-first — what already exists?
   • elaborate-spec — refine the idea (optional)
   • plan-release — sequence epics by WSJF
   • slice-tasks — cut vertical slices

4. Update status — On successful completion, set status: done for that workflow key in planning-status.yaml.

5. Advance — Set state.yaml active_flow: planning while in this chain. When all required keys are done, set handoff.next_skill to plan-work.

In specs/planning-status.yaml:

context_capsule:             # written by elaborate-spec; cleared on cycle completion
  written_at: "2026-06-22T03:00:00Z"
  written_by: elaborate-spec
  feature_name: "add dark mode"
workflows:
  survey-context:
    required: true
    status: done
  scope-work:
    required: true
    status: pending
  research-first:
    required: false
    status: optional
    note: "Skip if no external dependencies"
  elaborate-spec:
    required: false
    status: optional
  plan-release:
    required: true
    status: pending
  slice-tasks:
    required: true
    status: pending

→ verify: test -f specs/planning-status.yaml && grep -c 'status: done' specs/planning-status.yaml | awk '{if($1>=3) print "OK"; else print "INCOMPLETE"}'