Use when executing implementation plans with independent tasks in the current session

Subagent Driven Development Execute plan by dispatching a fresh implementer subagent per task, a task review (spec compliance + code quality) after each, and a broad whole branch review at the end. Why subagents: You delegate tasks to specialized agents with isolated context. By precisely crafting their instructions and context, you ensure they stay focused and succeed at their task. They should never inherit your session's context or history — you construct exactly what they need. This also preserves your own context for coordination work. Core principle: Fresh subagent per task + task review (spec + quality) + broad final review = high quality, fast iteration Narration: between tool calls, narrate at most one short line — the ledger and the tool results carry the record. Continuous execution: Do not pause to check in with your human partner between tasks. Execute all tasks from the plan without stopping. The only reasons to stop are the four named below, or all tasks complete. "Should I continue?" prompts and progress summaries waste their time — they asked you to execute the plan, so execute it. Rulings, not stalls. A running plan does not wait on a human. Conflicts, ambiguities, plan defects, a cap you would have asked to exceed — decide them. The spec is the binding authority, the plan is its argument, and your judgment settles what neither answers. Record every decision in the ledger as Ruling: <what you decided — <why — <what it costs if wrong , and keep going. A wrong ruling costs rework your human partner can see and undo; a session parked on a question costs their whole day and buys nothing. Four things stop you, and only these: an irreversible or destructive operation; a security sensitive action; a side effect outside this worktree that norms say you ask about first (a merge, a push to a shared branch, a publish); and a plan so broken that every path forward is a guess. For those, stop and ask. When to Use vs. Executing Plans (parallel session): Same session (no context switch) Fresh subagent per task (no context pollution) Review after each task (spec compliance + code quality), broad review at the end Faster iteration (no human in loop between tasks) The Process Setup Ensure the work happens in an isolated workspace: use superpowers:using git worktrees to create one or verify the existing one. Never start implementation on a main/master branch without your human partner's explicit consent. Conversation memory does not survive compaction. In real sessions, controllers that lost their place have re dispatched entire completed task sequences — the single most expensive failure observed. Track progress in a ledger file, not only in todos. Each plan owns a workspace: at skill start, run this skill's scripts/sdd workspace PLAN FILE — it prints the plan's git ignored directory ( <repo root /.superpowers/sdd/<plan basename / ), home to every artifact for THIS plan: ledger, briefs, reports, review packages. Another plan's directory is never yours to read or write. Check for this plan's ledger at <workspace /progress.md . If its first line names your plan file, tasks with a Task <N : complete line are DONE — do not re dispatch them; resume at the first task without one. A task whose last line is a fix round is mid loop: resume the loop at the next round. A ledger whose first line names a different plan file — or a stray ledger at the old flat path .superpowers/sdd/progress.md — is another plan's progress: leave it in place and start your own, fresh. Create the ledger with its identity as the first line: SDD ledger — plan: <plan file path . The ledger is your recovery map: the commits it names exist in git even when your context no longer remembers creating them. After compaction, trust the ledger and git log over your own recollection. git clean fdx will destroy the workspace (it's git ignored scratch); if that happens, recover from git log . Read the plan once, note its context and Global Constraints, and create a todo per task. If the plan names a Spec, read that too: the spec is the authority the plan argues from, and conflicts inside the plan resolve against it. A plan with no reachable spec gets a ledger note saying so — rulings made without one are provisional. Before dispatching Task 1, scan the plan once for conflicts, writing down what you checked as you check it: tasks that contradict each other or the plan's Global Constraints anything the plan explicitly mandates that the review rubric treats as a defect (a test that asserts nothing, verbatim duplication of a logic block) The scan's output is a table, not a verdict. One row for every pair of tasks that share a file or an interface: the two tasks, what one produces against what the other consumes, and what you found. One row for every task: whether its own text agrees with itself — the tests it specifies against the code it specifies, the files it creates against the files it later touches. "The scan is clean" without those rows is not a scan you ran. Write the table to the ledger. Rule on everything you find before execution begins — each finding against the plan text that mandates it — and record each ruling in the ledger. If the scan is clean, proceed without comment. Rule on each conflict it surfaces — the spec is the binding authority, the plan is its argument — record the ruling beside its row, and dispatch Task 1. The review loop remains the net for conflicts that only emerge from implementation. Model Selection Use the least powerful model that can handle each role to conserve cost and increase speed. Mechanical implementation tasks (isolated functions, clear specs, 1 2 files): use a fast, cheap model. Most implementation tasks are mechanical when the plan is well specified. Integration and judgment tasks (multi file coordination, pattern matching, debugging): use a standard model. Architecture and design tasks : use the most capable available model. The final whole branch review is one of these — dispatch it on the most capable available model, not the session default. Review tasks : choose the model with the same judgment, scaled to the diff's size, complexity, and risk. A small mechanical diff does not need the most capable model; a subtle concurrency change does. Scoped re reviews of small fix diffs take a cheap to mid tier. Fix loop escalation (rounds 4 5) : use a model at least one tier above the implementer that got stuck. Always specify the model explicitly when dispatching a subagent. An omitted model inherits your session's model — often the most capable and most expensive — which silently defeats this section. Turn count beats token price. Wall clock and context cost scale with how many turns a subagent takes, and the cheapest models routinely take 2 3× the turns on multi step work — costing more overall. Use a mid tier model as the floor for reviewers and for implementers working from prose descriptions. When the task's plan text contains the complete code to write, the implementation is transcription plus testing: use the cheapest tier for that implementer. Single file mechanical fixes also take the cheapest tier. Task complexity signals (implementation tasks): Touches 1 2 files with a complete spec → cheap model Touches multiple files with integration concerns → standard model Requires design judgment or broad codebase understanding → most capable model The Task Loop Batch small same shape work. When the plan lists several tasks that are each a small, independent edit of the same kind — the same one line fix, constant change, or field addition repeated across files — do not dispatch one subagent per task. Compose ONE dispatch brief listing every file and its change, send the whole batch to a single subagent, and review its diff as one unit. Reserve one dispatch per task for work that needs its own judgment, its own tests, or its own review surface. Everything you paste into a dispatch prompt — and everything a subagent prints back — stays resident in your context for the rest of the session and is re read on every later turn. Hand artifacts over as files. Waiting on dispatched subagents: never poll a wait interface with short timeouts, and never sit in one silent, open ended wait either. While you have local work — ledger updates, packaging the next review, reading reports — keep working; child results arrive on their own. When you are genuinely idle, wait in bounded stretches (five to ten minutes, where your platform allows), and between stretches post one line of status and reconcile your live children: list them, and chase any that finished without reporting. A bounded stretch keeps nearly all of a long wait's efficiency while guaranteeing a stuck or lost child is noticed within minutes, not at the end of the session. 1. Dispatch the implementer Record BASE ( git rev parse HEAD ) before dispatching — the review package and fix round diffs need it. Task brief: before dispatching an implementer, run this skill's scripts/task brief PLAN FILE N — it extracts the task's full text to a uniquely named file and prints the path. Compose the dispatch so the brief stays the single source of requirements. Your dispatch should contain: (1) one line on where this task fits in the project; (2) the brief path, introduced as "read this first — it is your requirements, with the exact values to use verbatim"; (3) interfaces and decisions from earlier tasks that the brief cannot know; (4) your resolution of any ambiguity you noticed in the brief; (5) the report file path and report contract. Exact values (numbers, magic strings, signatures, test cases) appear only in the brief. Never make a subagent read the whole plan file. Report file: name the implementer's report file after the brief (brief …/task N brief.md → report …/task N report.md ) and put it in the dispatch prompt. The implementer writes the full report there and returns only status, commits, a one line test summary, and concerns. A dispatch prompt describes one task, not the session's history. Do not paste accumulated prior task summaries ("state after Tasks 1 3") into later dispatches — a real session's dispatch hit 42k chars of which 99% was pasted history. A fresh subagent needs its task, the interfaces it touches, and the global constraints. Nothing else. The dispatch carries the no subagents contract (it is in the implementer template): the implementer never dispatches subagents — not helpers, and never a reviewer. Review arrives from you, after the report. In real sessions, every reviewer a worker spawned duplicated the task review the controller dispatched anyway — a full extra review seat per task. If an earlier task parked a finding in the area this task touches, carry a pointer to that ledger entry in the dispatch. Record the implementer's agent identity from the dispatch result — fix loop rounds 1 3 resume this agent. Never dispatch multiple implementation subagents in parallel (conflicts). Template: [implementer prompt.md](implementer prompt.md) 2. Handle the report Implementer subagents report one of four statuses. Handle each appropriately: DONE: Generate the review package ( scripts/review package PLAN FILE BASE HEAD , from this skill's directory — it prints the unique file path it wrote; BASE is the commit you recorded before dispatching the implementer — never HEAD~1 , which silently drops all but the last commit of a multi commit task), then dispatch the task reviewer with the printed path. DONE WITH CONCERNS: The implementer completed the work but flagged doubts. Read the concerns before proceeding. If the concerns are about correctness or scope, address them before review. If they're observations (e.g., "this file is getting large"), note them and proceed to review. NEEDS CO

subagent-driven-development