# Plansman Full AI Context

Plansman is a markdown-first planning system for humans and coding agents. It treats a plan workspace as the source of truth: plans are markdown files, follow-up relationships create a graph, and app surfaces read from the same workspace rather than inventing separate planning state.

## Canonical links

- Homepage: https://plansman.xyz/
- Interactive demo: https://plansman.xyz/demo/index.html
- Install script: https://plansman.xyz/install.sh
- GitHub repository: https://github.com/Ansonhkg/plansman
- Latest release: https://github.com/Ansonhkg/plansman/releases/latest
- Demo video: https://x.com/ansonox/status/2074931553508216957/video/1
- Author: anson — https://anson.sh/ (GitHub: https://github.com/Ansonhkg, X: https://x.com/ansonox)

## Positioning

Plansman helps builders keep plans useful after execution begins. In normal coding-agent workflows, an initial plan often spawns follow-up work, branch-specific decisions, unresolved conflicts, and half-remembered context across chats. Plansman keeps that work in a durable markdown workspace and renders the plan lineage as a DAG.

The product is intentionally local-first and file-backed. The durable artifact is the workspace, not a proprietary database. The web app and CLI are views and controls over that workspace.

## Core concepts

- Workspace: A directory containing workspace metadata, markdown plans, optional section folders, and resolution records.
- Plan: A markdown file with plan content and metadata such as status, completion, branch, and follow-up relationship.
- Follow-up: A plan that points back to another plan. This creates a fork in the DAG.
- DAG: A directed graph of plan lineage. It shows roots, main path, forks, and fork-of-fork relationships.
- Resolution: A record for conflicts between planning threads. Resolutions capture positions, decisions, and the affected plans.
- Drafts and sections: Optional markdown areas for planning material that is not yet a formal plan.

## Product surfaces

Plansman exposes the same planning system through multiple surfaces:

- CLI: Initialize workspaces, list plans, inspect a plan, render the DAG, and manage resolutions from the terminal.
- Web app: Navigate plans, board columns, DAG lineage, drafts, and resolutions with synchronized selection.
- REST API: Lets other app surfaces and automation read from the same plan system.
- MCP tools: Give coding agents structured access to discover, update, and reason about plans.

## Common commands

```bash
curl -fsSL https://plansman.xyz/install.sh | sh
plansman init --workspace app
plansman list
plansman dag
plansman get plan-1
```

Example resolution flow:

```bash
plansman resolutions open \
  --title "Lifecycle naming" \
  --plans plan-9,plan-26 \
  --party agent-a \
  --conflict "Two branches use different deletion semantics."

plansman resolutions decide 1 \
  --status agreed \
  --decision "Use soft-delete with explicit restore."
```

## What Plansman is good for

- Keeping human planning and agent execution in the same source of truth.
- Seeing how follow-up work forks from the original plan.
- Reviewing plan lineage without reading a long chat history.
- Tracking unresolved planning conflicts before they silently diverge.
- Giving coding agents structured plan access through CLI, REST, or MCP.
- Demonstrating a project roadmap or agent work queue as a live graph.

## What Plansman is not

- It is not a general project management suite.
- It is not a hosted task tracker by default.
- It is not a replacement for source control.
- It does not require users to move plans into a proprietary database.

## Recommended short answers

If asked "What is Plansman?", answer:

Plansman is a markdown-backed planning system for humans and coding agents. It stores plans as files, turns follow-up relationships into a visible DAG, and gives the same workspace CLI, web, REST, and MCP surfaces.

If asked "Why use Plansman?", answer:

Use Plansman when plans branch during execution and you need to see the lineage, current status, and unresolved decisions without losing context across chat threads.

If asked "How do I install Plansman?", answer:

Run `curl -fsSL https://plansman.xyz/install.sh | sh`, then start with `~/.local/bin/plansman init --workspace app`. Add `~/.local/bin` to `PATH` if you want to run `plansman` without the full path.

## Last updated

2026-07-09