Plastic

Intent-based idea development system for AI-assisted work.

Plastic is a system that turns an intent, a vague goal or idea into a durable, linked record of discovery, decisions, delivery, and outcomes - it serves as a physical brain for your intents.

[Install] [See it work] [Read the manifesto]

Why Plastic?

You do not always start with a task.

You start with an intent, something like:

“I want users who are locked out to recover access safely.”

Plastic delivers this intent in successive stages: What -> Why -> How -> Exec.

The result is a readable, linked record of how an idea became real.

Plastic gives changing minds a durable way to develop ideas into work.

Plastic is named after neuroplasticity: the brain's amazing ability to change and adapt. It rewires itself as you learn new things, form memories, or heal from injuries. Instead of being fixed like a computer, your brain is more like clay. It constantly reshapes itself based on your experiences.

What Plastic does?

Plastic keeps the shape of the work stable - deterministic work system:

one durable intent
one visible lifecycle
one place for context, decisions, plans, and outcomes
links between the ideas that shaped the work and the ideas it creates

Plastic leaves the human or AI model free to think - non-deterministic thinking system.

Plastic makes that thinking legible, resumable, and useful later.

Who is Plastic for?

Plastic is built for an AI-native developer, technical founder, or
independent builder who works across multiple sessions, has ideas before
they have intents, and feels the cost of losing reasoning between agents,
contexts, and days.

What it solves?

It solves problems that builder already feels:

"I want to keep a record of my work - what I worked on, why I worked on it, how it was built"
"I do not need another TODO list."
"I do not want my work trapped inside a chat."
"I want to explore without losing the decision trail."
"I want a better model or new agent to inherit the work, not restart it."
"I want my ideas to compound."

Start in 60 seconds

One command installs Plastic for your agent:

npx @zalom/plastic --claude

Then load the conventions and begin:

/clear

I would like to learn more about Plastic and how it works.

Describe what you want in plain words, like "add a --version flag." Plastic
scaffolds the intent and walks it through What, Why, How, and Exec. For the
full path, read your first intent in 10 minutes.

How Plastic works?

A task assumes you already know the work.

An intent begins earlier:
something you want to accomplish, explore, or understand.

Plastic helps you develop it until it becomes a decision,
a plan, a delivery, and a reusable piece of project history.

Register What and start with Why

Plastic delivers all work through successive stages ->

Stage	Meaning	Developed concept	On-disk artifact (evidence)
What	What is the intention?	Intent	{id}--slug.md
Why	What context, evidence, and decisions shape it?	Specification	spec.md
How	What is the plan?	Plan and checklist	plan.md, checklist.md, actions/ACTION_1.md ... ACTION_N.md
Exec	What was actually delivered?	Outcome	outcome.md

How to use Plastic

Plastic organizes all work as intents. Each intent is one directory, and it carries the same
small set of files at every stage.

The intent directory

File	What it holds
`{id}--slug.md`	The intent itself: intent line, context, decisions
`spec.md`	The Why, consolidated into one contract for the plan
`plan.md`, `checklist.md`, `actions/`	The How: the plan and its execution registry
`outcome.md`	The Exec record: what actually shipped

See docs/architecture.md for the full store layout, and
reading a delivered intent for how to read a
finished one fast.

From idea to delivery, one line per stage

Stage	What happens
What	Describe the idea in plain words; Plastic scaffolds the intent
Why	Explore it, one ruling at a time, then consolidate into `spec.md`
How	Turn `spec.md` into `plan.md` and `checklist.md`
Exec	Build the change, verify it, tick the checklist
Done	`outcome.md` records what shipped; the index moves the intent to Completed

Walk this once in
your first intent in 10 minutes, or run
plastic-tutorial for an interactive, hands-on walkthrough of three different ways to work.

Commands, by family

Family	Commands
Mode	`plastic-tutorial`, `plastic-auto`
Intent	`plastic-continuing`, `plastic-intent-creating`, `plastic-intent-starting`, `plastic-intent-brainstorming`, `plastic-intent-grilling`, `plastic-intent-speccing`, `plastic-intent-planning`, `plastic-intent-executing`, `plastic-intent-ending`, `plastic-intent-continuing`, `plastic-intent-researching`
Project and delivery	`plastic-project-creating`, `plastic-project-continuing`, `plastic-roadmap`, `plastic-roadmap-continuing`, `plastic-releasing`
Skill	`plastic-skill-creating`, `plastic-skill-evaluating`
Product	`plastic-install`, `plastic-update`, `plastic-uninstall`, `plastic-rollback`, `plastic-doctor`, `plastic-humanizer`

See docs/guides/index.md for task-oriented walkthroughs.

The agent helps most at Why and How: turning a rough idea into rulings, and rulings into a
plan a machine can build from exactly. Read
pick your mode to decide how much of that to hand over.

Compatibility and ownership

Native installers for Claude (Codex, Hermes, and and others coming soon).
Plain Markdown plus Git. The work stays in files you own.
Personal stores by default.
Guided delivery with a human at every gate, or autonomous delivery when you
ask for it.
Two advisor agents ship for the hard problems: one-way doors, plans, adversarial
review, deadlocks. Summon one deliberately, state S, M, or L in the brief; nobody's
main session is ever touched. Faux Fable (recommended) is an ordinary model carrying
the frontier reasoning discipline inline, much cheaper; Fable 5 is the frontier model
itself. Choose the default at install, switch it any time.

Plastic needs Ruby (already on macOS and Linux) and Node.js 18 or later. Bun
users can run bunx in place of npx; Bun is never required.

Built with Plastic

Plastic is developed through Plastic.

The roadmap, intent history, plans, decisions, and outcomes
behind releases are part of the repository, not a hidden process.

changelog.

Documentation

docs/architecture.md: system structure, the two
processes, the store layout, and the full stage table.
docs/internals.md: how Plastic stays deterministic
and how the harness works.
docs/guides/: task-oriented guides, from your
first intent in 10 minutes to picking a delivery mode.

Conventions

Plastic conventions live in PLASTIC.md, distributed to ~/.plastic/PLASTIC.md
and overwritten on every update. Project-specific rules live in AGENTS.md.
Run plastic-doctor to check installation health; it compares files against
the manifests, checks store state, and runs automatically after every update.

License

MIT