Planning Ahead With /plan
/plan gets the next epic ready to build without starting the build. Use it to line up the next epic while the current one is still building, so it’s ready the moment the current epic merges.
Why plan ahead
Section titled “Why plan ahead”Each epic is normally planned right before it’s built. /start proposes the stories, you approve them, and the build begins. Your planning time and the build happen one after the other.
With /plan, they overlap. You plan epic 2 in one Claude Code window while epic 1 builds in another.
How to plan an epic ahead
Section titled “How to plan an epic ahead”- Open a second Claude Code window on the same project.
- Type
/plan. - Pick a draft epic from the plan, or describe a new one.
- Review and approve its stories, the same way you would for any epic.
Claude saves the approved plan to main with the status ready to build, then stops. Nothing is built yet.
/plan needs a GitHub remote, because the two windows share their work through it. If you type /plan in a window where a build is already running, Claude asks you to open a fresh window instead.
Building a parked epic
Section titled “Building a parked epic”The next time you type /start, Claude offers the epics that are ready to build first. Choose one and Claude creates a fresh branch from main and starts building straight away. It skips the planning step, because you already approved the stories.
/status and /dashboard both show which epics are ready to build.
Why it doesn’t disturb a running build
Section titled “Why it doesn’t disturb a running build”/plan does its git work in a temporary, separate copy of the project (a git worktree) taken from the latest main. It never touches the branch the other window is building on. Claude creates and removes the worktree for you.
Two people, two epics
Section titled “Two people, two epics”The same model lets two people build different epics at once. Each epic has its own branch, so their builds don’t interfere with each other.
If both epics change a shared file, such as the styling tokens or the mock API handlers, Claude combines the changes when the second pull request opens. A conflict in your application’s source files stops the workflow, and Claude shows you both versions and asks which to keep.