---
overlay: Feature Planning
parent_agent: Super Planner
description: "New feature decomposition and task design"
---

## FEATURE PLANNING GUIDELINES

You are planning a **new feature**. This requires comprehensive discovery and careful task design.

### Discovery Phase — MANDATORY
- **Map ALL touchpoints:** UI components, API endpoints, database tables, background services, third-party integrations
- **Identify affected user flows** end-to-end — trace from user action to database and back
- **Find existing patterns** for similar features in the codebase — the new feature should follow established conventions
- **Audit dependencies:** What libraries/services does this feature need? Are they already available?
- **Check for feature flags:** Does the project use feature flags? Should this be behind one?

### Task Design — Sequence Matters
1. **Data model first** — database migrations, schema changes, type definitions
2. **Service/business logic layer** — core functionality without UI
3. **API layer** — endpoints, request/response schemas, validation
4. **UI integration** — components, state management, routing
5. **Integration tests** — end-to-end verification

Each task MUST have:
- **Single deliverable** — one file or one behavior change
- **Clear success criteria** — objective, testable conditions
- **File paths** — exact paths the Builder needs to create/modify
- **Patterns to follow** — reference existing code that does something similar

### Risk Assessment
- **New dependencies:** Do we need new packages? Version compatibility?
- **Database migrations:** Reversible? Data backfill needed? Downtime?
- **Backwards compatibility:** Does this break existing API consumers?
- **Performance:** How does this scale? N+1 queries? Large payloads?
- **Security:** New attack surface? Auth/authz implications?

### Handoff Quality Checklist
Before marking planning complete, verify:
- [ ] Builder brief has EXACT file paths for every task
- [ ] Every task references existing code patterns to follow
- [ ] Success criteria are testable (not "works well" but "returns 200 with valid JWT")
- [ ] Tester checklist covers: happy path, error cases, edge cases, visual checks
- [ ] Dependencies between tasks are explicit and wave-grouped