Refactor Plan

An AI assisted planning skill that generates step by step refactoring plans, helping teams organize large scale code improvements into safe, incrementally deployable phases.

What Is This?

Overview

This skill creates detailed refactoring plans before any code is changed. Given a codebase and a goal, it analyzes dependencies, identifies risks, determines change ordering, and produces a phased plan with milestones. Each phase includes files to modify, expected outcomes, and rollback strategies.

Who Should Use This

Ideal for tech leads planning large refactoring initiatives, teams preparing for architectural migrations, and developers who need to break daunting tasks into manageable pull requests.

Why Use It?

Problems It Solves

Large refactoring projects often fail because they lack structure. Without a plan, developers make conflicting changes, merge conflicts multiply, and the effort drags on indefinitely. Teams lose momentum when they cannot see progress.

Core Highlights

• Dependency Analysis maps relationships between modules to determine safe change ordering
• Phased Execution breaks large refactors into small, independently shippable phases
• Risk Assessment identifies high risk changes and suggests mitigation strategies
• Progress Tracking provides milestones so teams can measure advancement
• Rollback Strategies includes fallback plans for each phase in case issues arise

How to Use It?

Basic Usage

Describe your refactoring goal and the skill will produce a structured plan with ordered phases.

## Refactoring Plan:

Migrate from Redux to Zustand

### Phase 1:

Setup and Parallel Infrastructure
- Install zustand package
- Create new store files mirroring existing Redux slices
- Add feature flag to toggle between stores
- Files: package.json, src/stores/*, src/config/features.ts

### Phase 2:

Migrate Auth Module
- Move auth state to Zustand store
- Update 8 components consuming auth state
- Keep Redux auth slice as fallback behind feature flag
- Files: src/stores/auth.ts, src/components/Login/*, src/hooks/useAuth.ts

### Phase 3:

Migrate Dashboard Module
- Move dashboard state and async actions
- Update 12 components
- Files: src/stores/dashboard.ts, src/components/Dashboard/*

Real-World Examples

Monolith to Microservices Planning

A startup needed to extract payment processing from a Django monolith into a standalone service. The skill produced a 6 phase plan. Phase 1 introduced an API boundary within the monolith. Phase 2 added integration tests. Phases 3 through 5 moved logic behind the API. Phase 6 deployed the extracted service.

phases:
  - name: "API boundary"
    status: complete
    prs: ["#401", "#405"]
  - name: "Integration tests"
    status: complete
    prs: ["#412"]
  - name: "Extract models"
    status: in_progress
    prs: ["#420"]
  - name: "Extract business logic"
    status: planned
  - name: "Extract handlers"
    status: planned
  - name: "Deploy service"
    status: planned

Advanced Tips

Review the plan with your team before starting. Use the dependency map to identify phases that can run in parallel. Schedule a checkpoint after each phase to adjust the remaining plan.

When to Use It?

Use Cases

• Architecture Migrations plan the move from one framework or pattern to another
• Technical Debt Reduction organize a structured approach to paying down debt
• API Versioning plan backward compatible changes across multiple services
• Database Schema Changes sequence migrations to avoid downtime
• Team Coordination align multiple developers working on related refactoring tasks

Related Topics

When working with refactoring plans, these prompts activate the skill:

• "Create a refactoring plan for this codebase"
• "How should I break down this migration"
• "Plan the steps to move from X to Y"
• "What order should I refactor these modules"

Important Notes

Requirements

• Works best with access to the project source code for accurate dependency analysis
• Benefits from an existing test suite to define safety boundaries for each phase
• Requires clear articulation of the refactoring goal
• Version control history helps identify high priority files

Usage Recommendations

Do:

• Share the plan with your team before starting any code changes
• Keep phases small enough to ship in individual pull requests
• Include rollback criteria so the team knows when to revert a phase
• Update the plan as you learn since early phases often reveal new information

Don't:

• Plan too far ahead in detail as later phases will change based on earlier results
• Skip the dependency analysis since changing shared modules first can cascade failures
• Ignore test coverage gaps as untested areas are the riskiest to refactor
• Treat the plan as immutable because flexibility is essential for large refactors

Limitations

• Plans are estimates and actual effort may vary based on hidden complexity
• Cannot account for external factors like changing business requirements mid refactor
• Very tightly coupled codebases may require manual analysis to supplement automated suggestions
• Plans assume a stable main branch during execution which may not hold in fast moving teams