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Plan Compass

Plan Compass extends staged workflow with the compass choreography preset: discover → design → review → execute → verify. Use it when a task is large enough that you want BMO to slow down, turn the approach into an inspectable plan, wait for approval before changing files, and carry the same plan through verification.

The preset is useful for multi-step refactors, release work, incident follow-up, and other tasks where “just start editing” is too loose. It keeps plan intake, plan quality, durable promotion, milestones, and verification targets on one operator path.

[choreography]
preset = "compass"


[options.staged_workflow]
enabled = true
require_approval_before_execute = true


[options.quality_gates.gates.plan]
enabled = true
mode = "send_back"

The TUI surfaces the selected horizon and checklist milestones in the plan content, then keeps the run-approval cockpit available until execution is approved.

Operator entry

Section titled “Operator entry”
  • TUI slash: /compass, /compass ingest, /compass promote, /compass mission
  • CLI: bmo plan ingest, bmo plan promote, bmo plan mission, bmo plan activate

What Plan Compass coordinates

Section titled “What Plan Compass coordinates”
  • Plan intake: /compass ingest and bmo plan ingest normalize an existing Markdown plan into compass metadata so the current session can review, approve, and execute it.
  • Plan strength: when the plan quality gate runs in send_back mode, weak plans are returned for more design work instead of moving straight to file edits.
  • Durable promotion: /compass promote and bmo plan promote can promote the session plan into a durable artifact. Exec-horizon promotion can also bind long-running work to maintainer artifact outside this repository, with optional workstream binding.
  • Approval-time activation: durable plans can opt in to activation on approval with compass.activate_on_approve or options.plan_compass.auto_activate_on_durable_approve.
  • Verification carry-through: plans can include verification_targets; BMO runs them when the workflow reaches the verify state.
  • Milestone progress: exec-horizon plans, or plans with exec_workstream_plan, show Milestones N/M done in the plan panel and /compass status when the plan body uses - [ ] / - [x] checklist lines.
  • Milestone delegation: /compass milestones spawn [--all] delegates unchecked milestones to local task subagents after /approve. Set spawn_milestones_on_approve = "next" or "all" in [options.plan_compass] to opt in automatically. The milestone_spawns metadata records whether each child finishes as done, failed, or cancelled; plan body checkboxes remain manual.
  • Submit hint: when staged workflow is on but the session is not using the compass preset, complex free-text tasks may show an advisory /compass nudge instead of changing presets automatically.

Copy-paste preset blocks live in docs/topics/config/operating-packs.md in the BMO repository.