emsenn

SKILL

4 min read

Review all plans, sort by priority and dependencies, and recommend what to work on next.

Instructions

1. List all plans

ls content/technology/specifications/agential-semioverse-repository/plans/[0-9]*.md 2>/dev/null | sort

2. Read each plan’s frontmatter

For each plan, extract:

  • title
  • status (draft, proposed, accepted, active, completed, abandoned, deferred)
  • priority (critical, high, medium, low)
  • depends-on (list of plan numbers)
  • milestone (optional)
  • appetite (small, medium, large — optional)
  • goal (optional)
  • date-created
  • authors

3. Categorize and sort

Group plans by status:

  • active — currently being worked on
  • accepted — approved but not started
  • proposed — ready for emsenn’s review
  • draft — still being written
  • completed — done
  • abandoned — stopped
  • deferred — postponed

Within each group, sort by:

  1. Priority (critical > high > medium > low)
  2. Dependency count: plans that are depended on BY more other plans rank higher (they unblock more work)
  3. Plan number (lower = older = tiebreaker)

4. Check for problems

For each active plan:

  • Read the log section. When was the last log entry?
  • If the last entry is more than 7 days old, flag as stale.
  • Read the dependencies. Are they satisfied?
  • If dependencies are unsatisfied, flag as blocked.

For each proposed/accepted plan:

  • Are its depends-on plans completed? If not, flag as blocked.
  • If unblocked, it’s ready to start (accepted) or ready for review (proposed).

5. Recommend next action

Apply the priority algorithm from plans/index.md:

  1. If any active plan is blocked → recommend unblocking it
  2. If any accepted plan isn’t started → recommend starting the highest-priority unblocked one
  3. If proposed plans exist → recommend reviewing them with emsenn
  4. If nothing is accepted → recommend writing plans for unplanned TODO.md items
  5. If nothing is pending → recommend asking emsenn for direction

6. Board view

Present plans as a board with four columns. This maps to the semiotic-project-management spec §3.5 (board as flow of closure):

ColumnStatuses includedClosure meaning
DraftdraftStill being shaped
Shapedproposed, acceptedPath to closure designed
ActiveactiveClosure in progress
Closedcompleted, abandoned, deferredResolved

Output the board:

## Board

### Draft (shaping)
- 0001 Agent instructions [medium]
- 0003 Policy encoding [high] ⊘ blocked by 0004

### Shaped (ready)
- 0005 Some proposed plan [high] — needs emsenn review
- 0006 Some accepted plan [medium] — ready to start

### Active (in progress)
- 0017 Board and WIP [high] appetite:small

### Closed
- 0004 Planning improvements [critical] ✓

Within each column, sort by priority then dependency count. Mark blocked plans with ⊘. Mark proposed plans as needing review. Show appetite if present.

7. WIP limit check

Count plans with status = active. If count > 3:

⚠ WIP LIMIT EXCEEDED: N active plans (limit: 3)
Active: 0017, 0023, 0035, 0042
Consider: complete or defer a plan before starting new work.

If count = 3, note it is at limit. If count ⇐ 2, no warning needed.

8. Milestone view

Group all non-closed plans by their milestone field. For each milestone, show total plans, completed plans, and completion percentage:

## Milestones

### project-management-v1
Progress: 1/4 (25%)
- ✓ 0004 Planning improvements
- ◉ 0017 Board and WIP [active]
- ○ 0022 Definition of Done [proposed]
- ○ 0023 Cycle workflow [proposed]

### (no milestone)
- ○ 0001 Agent instructions [draft]

Use ✓ for completed, ◉ for active, ○ for other states.

9. Summary table

Also output the flat table for reference:

## All plans

| # | Title | Status | Priority | Milestone | Appetite | Issues |
|---|-------|--------|----------|-----------|----------|--------|
| 0017 | Board and WIP | active | high | pm-v1 | small | — |
| 0022 | Definition of Done | proposed | medium | pm-v1 | — | review |

10. Recommendation

State the recommended next action (from step 5):

  • If there is an active plan, state the next step from its Steps section
  • If there are stale or blocked plans, surface them
  • If there are proposed plans, list them as needing emsenn’s review

11. Do not

  • Do not approve or activate plans (only emsenn does that).
  • Do not start working on a plan — just report and recommend.

Graph View