Plan Command

The plan command generates a strategic growth plan by feeding your manifest and template data to a "Council of Growth Engineers" -- an LLM system prompt that operates as an elite advisory board focused on first-time user activation.

Prerequisites

Before running plan, you need:

• An API key configured for a cloud LLM provider (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic), or a local LLM server running (LM Studio, Ollama). See configuration for setup instructions.
• Optionally, growth-manifest.json and growth-template.json from a previous analyze run. The plan command works without these files but produces better results when they are available.

Basic usage

Generate a growth plan using auto-detected context files:

uvx skene plan

The command looks for growth-manifest.json and growth-template.json in ./skene-context/ (default output from analyze), then falls back to the current directory. Neither file is required -- the command runs with whatever context it finds.

Specify context files explicitly:

uvx skene plan --manifest ./skene-context/growth-manifest.json --template ./skene-context/growth-template.json

Point to a directory containing both files:

uvx skene plan --context ./my-context

Generate an activation-focused plan:

uvx skene plan --activation

Flag reference

Note: The --activation flag was previously called --onboarding in earlier versions.

How it works: the Council of Growth Engineers

The plan command uses a specialized system prompt called the Council of Growth Engineers. This is not a generic "give me a plan" prompt. The LLM is instructed to role-play as a council operating at the intersection of product, data, and psychology, drawing on decision-making frameworks from elite growth teams at companies like Meta, Airbnb, and Stripe.

The council follows strict rules:

• No beginner explanations. Assumes 99th-percentile competence.
• No generic growth hacks. If the advice appears on a "Top 10" list, it is discarded.
• No hedging. The council picks the winning path and kills weak strategies immediately.
• Zero fluff. Every word must increase signal-to-noise ratio.
• Focus on first actions. The plan targets first-time user activation, not long-term retention.
• No demos or hardcoded data. Solutions must deliver real configuration paths or incremental real value.

The council generates a structured memo covering eight sections:

1. Executive Summary -- High-level overview focused on first-time activation
2. The CEO's Next Action -- The single most impactful move to execute in the next 24 hours
3. Strip to the Core -- Reframes the problem as a first-action activation challenge
4. The Playbook -- Hidden mechanics used by elite growth teams
5. Engineer the Asymmetric Leverage -- The one lever that creates 10x activation for 1x input
6. Apply Power Dynamics -- Strategy based on controlling onboarding, first value, activation friction, and action clarity
7. Technical Execution -- Detailed build plan with confidence scores, exact logic, data triggers, and sequencing
8. The Memo -- The complete engineering memo, direct and high-signal

The Technical Execution section is particularly important because it feeds directly into the build command.

Activation mode

The --activation flag switches the system prompt from the Council of Growth Engineers to a Senior Activation Engineer perspective. This mode focuses specifically on activation optimization with a different philosophy:

uvx skene plan --activation

The activation engineer operates under the principle of progressive revelation -- treating onboarding not as a one-time event but as a continuous evolution of state. Key concepts:

• The 60-Second Rule. The first minute determines lifetime value. If the user has not felt the impact of value within 60 seconds, the opportunity is lost.
• Contextual Configuration. Configuration is friction. Collect information only at the moment of action.
• Data-Driven Correction. Onboarding flows drift when the product evolves but the flow remains static.

The activation memo follows a different structure:

1. Strip to the Momentum Core -- Distinguish between "tour" (weak) and "pathway to power" (strong)
2. The Playbook -- Hidden mechanics from elite onboarding at Stripe, Linear, Vercel
3. Engineer the Asymmetric Move -- The single lever that makes the rest of the product inevitable
4. Apply Power Dynamics -- Control of the clock, state, configuration, and signals
5. Technical Execution -- The onboarding primitive to deploy, with confidence score and exact logic
6. The "Generic" Trap -- Why tooltip tours lead to completion without adoption
7. Your Next Action -- The most impactful technical move for the next 24 hours
8. The Memo -- The engineering memo

Context files

The plan command auto-detects context files in this order:

1. If --context is specified, looks inside that directory first
2. Checks ./skene-context/ (default output directory from analyze)
3. Checks the current directory

For the manifest:

• <context>/growth-manifest.json
• ./skene-context/growth-manifest.json
• ./growth-manifest.json

For the template:

• <context>/growth-template.json
• ./skene-context/growth-template.json
• ./growth-template.json

The command also loads any existing growth loop definitions from <context>/growth-loops/. When previous growth loops are found, the council is instructed not to suggest duplicate features and to focus on complementary opportunities instead.

Output format

The plan is saved as a Markdown file (default: ./skene-context/growth-plan.md). If the -o path points to a directory or has no file extension, the tool appends growth-plan.md automatically.

The output includes:

• The full council memo in Markdown format
• An Implementation Todo List displayed in the terminal after generation, showing prioritized tasks extracted from the plan

After generation, the terminal displays the memo content and a summary todo list. The plan file is what the build command reads to generate implementation prompts.

What happens without an API key

If no API key is configured and you are not using a local provider (ollama, lmstudio), the command falls back to a sample report preview. To run the full plan generation, provide an API key via any of these methods:

1. --api-key flag
2. SKENE_API_KEY environment variable
3. api_key field in .skene.config or ~/.config/skene/config

Debug mode

The --debug flag logs all LLM input and output to .skene/debug/:

uvx skene plan --debug

You can also enable debug mode permanently in your config file:

debug = true

Next steps

• Build -- Turn your growth plan into an implementation prompt and send it to Cursor or Claude
• Configuration -- Set up persistent config so you do not need to pass flags every time
• LLM Providers -- Detailed setup for each supported provider