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Atelier

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

Section titled “Prerequisites”
  • Atelier extension with the Planning Skill installed
  • At least one todo item in the To Do column
  • Claude Code installed

Steps

Section titled “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 button in the sidebar.

    Atelier opens a new terminal tab and sends a prompt to Claude Code using the Planning Skill. The prompt follows the template: Plan {{title}} using /atelier-plan ....

  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 will prompt you for 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 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 task files. The locations of plan and task files are configurable.

  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 pie chart showing how many tasks are complete. Atelier updates your TODO.md so the todo line becomes a markdown link to the new plan file.

    A linked todo (promoted to a plan, still in progress) looks like:

    TODO.md
    - [ ] [Add dark mode support](~/.claude/plans/dark-mode.md)
    - [ ] Fix mobile layout issues

  8. Click on the plan card to open it in the spec editor.

    The plan opens in its own tab where you can see the acceptance criteria, design decisions, and the full plan content. The plan is editable in the spec editor and saves automatically back to the plan file.

  9. Click on individual task cards to open them in the spec editor.

    Each task opens in its own tab showing a reference to its parent plan and any blocking relationships with other tasks. Task descriptions are editable in the spec editor and save automatically back to the task file. Tasks in the Planning column are ready to implement and are waiting for you or Claude to pick them up.

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.

See Also

Section titled “See Also”