complexity-first-planning

# complexity-first-planning Part of the Reasoning Discipline Protocol. Engage per [`rdp-gate`](../../contexts/execution/rdp-gate.md) (skip on trivial / linear tasks; light touch on a strong-reasoning host). > **Provenance.** This is an **RDP derivation from general engineering discipline > (risk-first / critical-path / pre-mortem)** — it is **not** an Anthropic- > documented Fable behavior. Fable's "start at the top of your difficulty range" > is about *task selection* (give the model harder tasks), not intra-task order. > The skill stands on its own merit; it is not sold as a frontier-model transplant. ## When to use - Staging multi-component work where the hardest/most-uncertain part is not yet proven. - A plan whose later steps depend on an assumption that could collapse. Do NOT use for single-step, linear, or fully-specified tasks (no load-bearing unknown to resolve), or when the user has already fixed the sequence. ## When the agent should load this - The user asks to "plan", "break down", or "stage" work that spans ≥2 components and at least one part is unproven. - A multi-step plan is forming whose later steps assume something untested. - Mid-task: a step just failed because an earlier, easier step baked in a wrong assumption — reload this and re-sequence risk-first. ## Procedure 1. **Inspect and name the unknowns.** Read the affected components first (start from the **repo** slot of the [context-spine](../../../docs/contracts/context-spine.md) when ...