Planning and Decomposing Work

When you’re ready to move forward with a todo item, promote it to a plan. During planning, Claude Code analyzes your idea, discusses design decisions with you, defines acceptance criteria, and breaks the work into individual tasks. This transforms a simple idea into a structured, implementable work breakdown. Use this workflow when you want Claude to help you think through how to approach a piece of work before diving into code.

Prerequisites

• Atelier extension installed with custom skills (atelier-plan, atelier-implement, atelier-verify)
• At least one todo item in the To Do column
• Claude Code running and accessible

Steps

1. Open the Atelier kanban board and locate the todo item you want to plan in the To Do column.

2. Click on the todo card to open the sidebar.

The sidebar displays the todo’s description and an action button appropriate to its current status.

3. Click the Plan button in the sidebar.

Atelier opens a new terminal tab and sends a prompt to Claude Code using the atelier-plan skill. The prompt follows the template: “Use the atelier-plan skill to implement {task-path}”.

4. Switch to the terminal tab where Claude Code is now working.

Claude Code begins the planning process. It may ask you questions about design decisions, clarify requirements, or propose different approaches. Respond to these prompts directly in the terminal.

5. Review and approve design decisions as Claude presents them.

Claude uses its ask_user tool to get your input on key decisions. These decisions are recorded in the plan’s markdown file and help guide the implementation.

6. Wait for Claude to finish creating the plan.

When planning completes, Claude creates a plan markdown file in ~/.claude/plans/ containing the title and description, design decisions you approved, acceptance criteria that define “done”, and a reference to the task group for implementation. Claude also decomposes the plan into individual tasks, saved as JSON files in ~/.claude/tasks/{task-group}/.

7. Return to the Atelier kanban board.

The board updates automatically as Claude creates files. Your original todo now appears as a plan card, and the individual tasks appear as separate cards in the Planning column. The plan card displays a progress indicator showing how many tasks are complete.

8. Click on the plan card to review it in the sidebar.

You can see the acceptance criteria, design decisions, and a link to open the plan’s markdown file directly.

9. Click on individual task cards to review their details.

Each task card shows a reference to its parent plan and any blocking relationships with other tasks. Tasks in the Planning column are ready to implement and are waiting for you or Claude to pick them up.

Note

Claude Code may automatically update plans, tasks, and todos as it works. The kanban board reflects these changes in real time, so what you see always matches the current state of your project files.

You now have a fully planned piece of work broken into implementable tasks. Each task can be implemented independently, and the plan’s acceptance criteria will be used later to verify that the work is complete.