Quest Create Skill

Create a new quest — a high-level goal broken into ordered phases for automated execution.

Usage

/quest-create <goal description or context>

The user provides a goal/prompt. The quest-planner agent derives a quest name and phase breakdown.

Behavior

1. Check for active quests:

   • Look for .planning/*/QUEST.md files with Status: active
   • If one exists: warn the user (don't block — multiple quests can coexist, only one runs at a time)
   • .planning/archive/ is always preserved

2. Spawn quest-planner agent to analyze the goal:

   Task tool with subagent_type: quest-planner
   

   The planner returns:

   • Quest name (short slug, e.g., "cost-tracking")
   • QUEST.md content (goal, repos, context)
   • PHASES.md content (ordered phases with goals)

3. Create quest directory: .planning/YYYY-MM-DD-<quest-name>/

   • Date prefix uses today's date for chronological sorting
   • Quest name slug from planner output (lowercase, hyphenated)

4. Write quest files:

   • QUEST.md — Goal, linked repos, status (active), created date
   • PHASES.md — Ordered phases, all status pending
   • STATE.md — Current phase, activity log
   • config.json — {"maxRetries": 3, "commitFormat": "conventional"}
   • phases/ — Empty directory for phase plans

5. Add .planning/ to .gitignore if not already present

6. Display quest summary and next steps

Output Files

QUEST.md

# Quest: Quest Name

**Goal:** Goal description here.

**Status:** active

**Repos:**
- /path/to/repo (primary)

**Created:** YYYY-MM-DD

---

## Context

Detailed context from planner analysis.

## Key Dependencies

Phase dependency notes if any.

PHASES.md

# Phases

## Phase 1: Name
Goal: What this phase achieves
Status: `pending`

## Phase 2: Name
Goal: What this phase achieves
Status: `pending`

Phase states: pending → completed (or checkpoint if stuck after maxRetries).

STATE.md

# Quest State

Current Phase: 1
Quest Status: active

## Activity Log

- YYYY-MM-DD: Quest created with N phases

config.json

{
  "maxRetries": 3,
  "commitFormat": "conventional"
}

Directory Structure

.planning/
├── 2026-02-16-cost-tracking/
│   ├── QUEST.md
│   ├── PHASES.md
│   ├── STATE.md
│   ├── config.json
│   └── phases/
└── archive/
    ├── 2026-02-14-auth-system/
    └── 2026-02-10-loop-hardening/

Prerequisites

• Goal description provided by user

Next Steps

After creating a quest, use:

• /quest-run to run the automated phase loop
• /quest-status to check progress