Rule 10 — Pre-implementation planning and plan review¶

Requirement¶

Before implementation begins on any task, the implementation plan MUST be posted as a comment on the same Request issue and approved there. The plan MUST detail objectives, architectural and code changes, and verification steps.

Both approval gates remain: the interpretation is approved before a plan is written, and the plan is approved before any code is. One unit of work is one issue, so a pull request binds one thing and closing it closes one thing.

• Implementation Review Gate: Prior to merging the bound pull request, an implementation review MUST be conducted and commented on the same issue, confirming the implementation matches the plan exactly (Matches Plan: Yes).
• Plan Alignment: If the implementation diverged from the plan, an alignment comment (Plan Alignment:) detailing all deviations MUST be posted and explicitly approved before the pull request can be merged. CI enforces the presence of both the plan and the pre-merge review on all bound issues.

Rationale¶

Two human gates — interpretation and plan — prevent scope drift before code exists; the review gate proves delivered code matches what was approved.

Enforcement¶

• .github/scripts/agent_runner.py implements the two-gate flow and the review loop.
• tests/test_governance.py asserts the interpretation/plan markers exist in AGENTS.md.
• ci.yml checks bound issues carry plan and review.

Exceptions¶

None.

Change control¶

Wording evolves with merge-gates; node topology belongs to workflow-graph. This rule keeps the invariants, not the stage diagram.