What is plan-for-goal?

plan-for-goal is a skill for Claude Code, an AI coding tool, that helps you write better instructions for its autonomous mode called slash-goal. That feature lets the AI work on its own across multiple steps until a specific completion condition is met, but writing a condition precise enough for the AI to actually judge turns out to be the hard part. This skill takes any rough brief, such as a game idea, a refactoring task, or a content batch, and converts it into a structured plan with locked sections, plus a ready to paste slash-goal one liner you can drop straight into Claude Code or Codex, which is another compatible agent tool. The plan template it produces always includes the same numbered sections: the original brief, the tech stack, what is in scope and explicitly out of scope, constraints, a verifiable definition of done, acceptance criteria, verification steps, and a turn budget, which is a ceiling on how many steps the agent should take before stopping. The README explains that most failed autonomous runs fail for three reasons: vague completion conditions the AI cannot judge, no explicit out of scope section that lets the agent wander into related work, and no turn ceiling so the agent uses its full safety cap, 500 turns in Claude Code, as the actual budget. This skill forces you to address all three before the run starts. To install it, you clone the repository and copy or symlink the skill folder into your project's .claude/skills/ directory. It is compatible with Claude Code version 2.1.139 and later, and Codex CLI version 0.128.0 and later. A worked example is included: a Catan style board game with Game of Thrones themed AI company houses, built as 32 bit pixel art. The license is CC BY 4.0, free to use with attribution.