Planner is the project management layer of Software Factory, where work orders are created, organized, and executed with rich, traceable context from requirements and blueprints. It turns architectural intent into day-to-day tasks the team can actually ship.
Work orders are structured, traceable tasks that move the system toward the target state defined in your PRD and blueprints. Each work order bundles everything a contributor needs to execute: title, status, assignee, timing, full description, upstream context, implementation guidance, and collaboration history.
Every work order brings together:
Core metadata – ID, title, status, assignees, and phase.
Rich description – purpose, acceptance criteria, and out-of-scope notes, written in a rich text editor
Knowledge graph connection – links to upstream requirements and/or blueprints, with the ability to fetch concrete references.
Implementation plan (optional) – a step-by-step, file-level implementation outline for engineering work.
Activity & comments – a chronological feed of changes and threaded discussions, including attachments.
Planner keeps these work orders grounded in the source knowledge across Refinery and Foundry so that day-to-day execution always tracks back to why the work exists.
With work orders created, the next step is to shape a realistic delivery plan by assigning phases and sequencing tasks within each phase.
1. Assign work orders to phases
In the Table View, use the Phase column to set or change a work order’s phase via the inline dropdown.
Group the table by Phase to see work organized into collapsible sections with their phase ranges.
Use the Planner Agent’s Phase Planning action when many work orders are unassigned—the agent can propose a phase plan and apply it once you confirm.
2. Sequence work within a phase using drag-and-drop
When grouped by Phase, work orders can be dragged and dropped to define execution order:
Drag a work order up or down within the same phase to resequence priority.
Drag a work order into a different phase group to both reassign it to that phase, and place it at a specific position in that phase’s ordering.
This drag-and-drop sequencing gives teams a clear, visual sense of what should be done first, second, and so on within each timebox.
3. Use filters and search to refine the plan
Filter by assignee, status, phase, deliverable type, or feature to focus on specific slices of the plan (e.g., “all Phase 1 work assigned to me”).
Use the search input to quickly locate specific work orders by title before you move or resequence them.
Over time, managing phases and sequencing becomes the core “planning loop”: new work orders are created or extracted, then placed into phases and ordered so the team always knows what’s next.
Planner supports integration with external development tools through MCP (Model Context Protocol) connections. MCP allows developers to interact with Planner directly from their local development environment, reducing context switching between planning and implementation.
From the Planner table view, use the MCP Connection button to open the connection dialog.
Open the MCP Connection Setup dialog from Planner.
Follow the setup instructions shown for your selected coding agent. Some agents support one-click installation directly from the dialog, others provide a configuration JSON to copy into a .mcp.json file in your project.
If prompted by your coding agent, select Use This MCP server to confirm the connection.
Once setup is complete, the connection status updates to Connected, and Software Factory tools become available in your coding environment immediately.
The Planner Agent is the AI assistant that sits inside Planner and helps you manage the entire lifecycle of work orders—from extraction, to sequencing, to implementation planning.
The agent works with a broad, project-wide context so its suggestions are grounded and consistent:
Requirements – lists, searches, and reads PRD sections from Refinery.
Blueprints – lists, searches, and reads architectural blueprints from Foundry.
Work Orders – lists and reads all work orders, including description, status, assignees, phases, and any implementation plan.
Artifacts – lists, searches, and reads artifacts that have been uploaded in the Overview or in agent chats.
Codebase – uses a dedicated code search sub-agent to find similar implementations and patterns, discover relevant files and integration points and understand how your project typically structures code.
Because it understands both the planning layer and the underlying architecture/code, it can help maintain alignment between “what we said we’d do” and “what we’re actually building.”
Background agents monitor blueprints for significant changes and surface them in Planner:
Create Work Orders from Blueprints: When a blueprint is newly completed or heavily updated, Planner may suggest new work orders. An alert in the Planner Agent panel indicates how many blueprints are ready for extraction and lets you trigger the extraction workflow.
Update Work Orders from Blueprints" When existing work orders are now out-of-date compared to their blueprints, Planner flags the affected work orders, raises a “Work Orders Need Updates” alert, and guides you through suggested updates to bring tasks back in line with the design.
Curate how work orders are written using Planner Settings. Use Overview → Project Settings to configure phase cadence and, most importantly, work order extraction strategies. This is where you define what “good” work orders look like for your team—size, scope, and level of detail. Treat these settings as the contract between blueprints and execution.
Always ground tasks in upstream context. Use Knowledge Graph connections and “Find References” so each work order traces back to a requirement and/or blueprint. This reduces misinterpretation later.
Use the description sections rigorously. Treat Purpose, Acceptance Criteria, and Out of Scope as non-optional. Clear boundaries here prevent scope creep and confusion during implementation and review.
Keep implementation plans realistic and concise. Plans should be specific enough to unblock a developer, but not so detailed that they try to mirror every line of code. Focus on files, key changes, and integration points.
Let the Planner Agent handle the mechanical work. Use agent actions for bulk updates, extraction from blueprints, and phase planning so humans can focus on judgment calls, not data entry.
Review and sync regularly. Make it routine to respond to Planner alerts, refresh work orders from updated blueprints, and adjust implementation plans as the codebase evolves. Avoid letting drift pile up.
