planning-with-files-zht

The planning-with-files-zht skill provides a structured, file-based approach for managing and tracking complex tasks and projects. It leverages persistent Markdown files—task_plan.md, findings.md, and progress.md—as a form of 'disk memory' to maintain continuity across multi-step workflows. This skill is particularly designed to handle scenarios where projects involve more than five tool interactions or multiple phases, ensuring that every step is organized, documented, and easily retrievable even after a session reset or a /clear command. By using these files, users can maintain a clear overview of ongoing tasks, track progress, and record findings systematically, minimizing the risk of lost information during long or complex operations.

The skill's main features include automatic detection and restoration of existing project files, hooks that guide file reading before and after tool usage, and structured prompts for updating progress and task plans. It provides pre-built templates for quick initialization, enforces rules such as creating a plan before starting tasks, saving key findings after certain operations, and always consulting the plan before major decisions. The system is designed for consistent use of persistent files to maintain long-term context beyond the immediate session, offering users a reliable method to track multi-step projects, research, and iterative tasks with precision.

This skill is ideal for professionals, researchers, or developers who handle complex projects requiring structured planning and detailed record-keeping. Use cases include research studies, software development projects, multi-step problem-solving, and scenarios where tracking incremental progress is essential. Users benefit from its ability to organize work in a way that supports sequential decision-making, context recovery, and progress transparency, making it particularly useful in collaborative or iterative environments where maintaining a coherent project history is crucial.