Planner Agent

The Planner agent role, TaskSpec generation, and scope boundaries.

The Planner Agent (◈)

The Planner is the architectural entry point of NIKI. Its mission is to convert an ambiguous human task description into a concrete, minimal, and deterministic engineering specification.

What the Planner Does

1. Workspace Scanning: Inspects file trees, project configurations (package.json, Cargo.toml, pyproject.toml), and existing interfaces.
2. Knowledge Ingestion: Reads relevant project documentation matching [knowledge].doc_globs and external URLs configured in niki.toml.
3. Spec Generation: Emits a structured TaskSpec JSON artifact detailing:
   • Files to create, modify, or delete.
   • Step-by-step implementation strategy.
   • Acceptance criteria that must be verified.
   • Technical constraints and architectural invariants.
   • Estimated complexity (Low, Medium, High, Critical).

Recommended Models

Because planning requires deep reasoning, long-context comprehension, and strict adherence to schemas, we recommend using high-capability reasoning models for the Planner:

[agents.planner]
provider    = "anthropic"
model       = "claude-sonnet-4-20250514"
max_tokens  = 8192
temperature = 0.2