# Repository-grounded implementation plan

Source: https://refyneit.com/prompts/implementation-plan-repo-grounded

Produce an executable plan tied to real files, contracts, dependencies, and verification.

## When to use it

The plan must prove it understands the current system and connect every task to files, contracts, and verification, making it useful to the next engineer or agent.

## Prompt

Create an implementation plan for [FEATURE OR REFACTOR]. Do not edit code.

Start by reading repository guidance and tracing the current behavior end to end. Identify the relevant entry points, callers, data contracts, persistence, external integrations, tests, build/deploy configuration, and existing patterns that the change should reuse.

State:
- the problem and desired observable outcome
- confirmed current behavior with file/symbol references
- assumptions and unresolved questions
- in-scope and explicitly out-of-scope work
- compatibility, migration, security, privacy, and data-loss constraints

Then break the implementation into the smallest independently verifiable phases. For every task include:
1. Goal and rationale
2. Exact files and symbols to change or add
3. Behavior and contract changes
4. Dependencies on earlier tasks
5. Tests to add or update
6. Verification command or manual check
7. Rollback or failure considerations when relevant

Sequence tasks according to real dependencies. Call out tasks that can run in parallel. Do not invent file names, APIs, or architecture not supported by the repository; label proposals as proposals.

Finish with a requirement-to-task traceability table, release/rollout steps, observability, and a definition-of-done checklist.

## Adaptation and provenance

Condensed and relaxed from GitHub Awesome Copilot's Implementation Plan Generation Mode so it fits existing repository conventions.

Contributor: [@aaronpowell](https://github.com/aaronpowell)
Repository: https://github.com/github/awesome-copilot
Pinned commit: b95e24caae4f25c5985f8527fd092ccfed039c36
License: [MIT](https://github.com/github/awesome-copilot/blob/b95e24caae4f25c5985f8527fd092ccfed039c36/LICENSE)
- [implementation-plan](https://github.com/github/awesome-copilot/blob/b95e24caae4f25c5985f8527fd092ccfed039c36/agents/implementation-plan.agent.md)
Review: source-reviewed, 2026-08-23. Compared with the commit-pinned source and adapted into a tool-neutral, copy/paste request. This is a non-visual task, so no output artifact is required.