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GSD Core organizes long-running agent work around a durable .planning/ directory. The project, roadmap, requirements, current state, phase context, research, plans, summaries, verification, UAT, and handoff files carry work across sessions. Source stamp: open-gsd/gsd-core at 50efae13, reviewed July 18, 2026. Repository license: MIT.

Artifact tree

The official planning-artifacts reference defines these roles. The repository also publishes its templates and dogfoods ADRs, including a plan-drift guard decision.

Workflow and task grain

The recurring lifecycle is discuss, plan, execute, verify, and ship. A roadmap divides a milestone into phases. Phase context and research inform one or more plans; execution summaries and verification records describe what happened. STATE.md and continuation files help the next session find the current frontier. GSD’s unit is broader than one implementation plan. It keeps project and milestone memory alongside the plan, making file maintenance part of the method.

Review and handoff conventions

Discussion captures human decisions before planning. Verification and UAT have their own artifacts. A phase can leave an explicit continuation record rather than relying on chat history. That makes the state tree useful, but also means stale files can mislead later sessions if the team does not maintain them.

Inspect the same-case output

Inspect the generated GSD .planning/ tree for reliable webhook delivery. It includes the project, requirements, roadmap, state, configuration, and phase context. The phase-plan run stalled and was interrupted, so no completed phase plan is included.

Choose GSD Core when

  • work spans many sessions or phases;
  • the repository should carry explicit project state;
  • research, execution summaries, verification, and UAT need separate records; and
  • the team will maintain the planning tree as work changes.
For a smaller single-feature method, compare Superpowers vs GSD or inspect GitHub Spec Kit. For long-running work more generally, read What are long-horizon tasks for AI agents?. Reviewed July 19, 2026. Researched and maintained by the Plannotator documentation team. GSD Core is named for identification; Plannotator is not affiliated with or endorsed by its maintainers.
Last modified on July 20, 2026