PLUGIN·preview

Three planning variants — linear, tournament, convergence — from rough idea to executable plan.

Three planning variants — Cast (linear), Alloy (tournament), Temper (convergence) — that turn a rough idea into a deployable implementation plan.

Install the plugin ↗INSTALL ↓READ THE LAUNCH POST →

withagents.dev/anneal

Read the launch post →

Anneal: Three Planning Variants for Agentic Development

2026-05-19 · 16 min read

PLANNING VARIANTS

PLAN SCORE ACHIEVED

17m

TEMPER WALL-CLOCK

60%

FAILURES WERE PLAN FAILURES

“Metal gains its strength not from heat or from cooling alone, but from the controlled sequence of both.”

Anneal ships three Claude Code plugins — Cast, Alloy, and Temper — that turn a rough idea into a deployable implementation plan.

Cast runs a linear 9-agent pipeline in ~4 minutes, Alloy adds tournament-consensus synthesis across 10 generators in ~6 minutes, and Temper iterates with a deepen-loop until the plan converges or hits a depth cap.

All three produce phase-sequenced plans with dependency graphs, gate criteria, and evidence requirements that compose with ValidationForge and multi-agent-consensus.

01. ARCHITECTURE

How it's built

MODULE 00

Cast

Linear nine-agent pipeline. Research, outline, elaborate, critique, refine, gate, evidence, integrate, finalize. ~4 minutes, ~8 agent spawns.

MODULE 01

Alloy

Tournament consensus. Ten generators produce competing plans scored against a rubric. A synthesizer folds the best signals into a single winner. ~18 spawns.

MODULE 02

Temper

Convergence loop. Iterative deepening: generate, critique, refine, re-evaluate until the plan stops changing or hits the depth cap. Most thorough.

02. FEATURES

Cast — Linear Pipeline

Nine specialized agents run sequentially: research, outline, elaborate, critique, refine, gate, evidence, integrate, finalize. ~4 minutes, ~8 agent spawns.

Alloy — Tournament Consensus

Ten generators produce competing plans scored against a rubric. A synthesizer folds the best signals into a single winner. ~6 minutes, ~18 agent spawns.

Temper — Convergence Loop

Iterative deepening: generate, critique, refine, re-evaluate until the plan stops changing or hits a depth cap. ~7 minutes, ~8x depth agent spawns.

03. QUICK START

// install

# install all three via the anneal-umbrella-dev marketplace
claude plugin marketplace add krzemienski/anneal
claude plugin install anneal-cast@anneal-umbrella-dev
claude plugin install anneal-alloy@anneal-umbrella-dev
claude plugin install anneal-temper@anneal-umbrella-dev

# generate a plan with Cast (linear, fastest)
/anneal-cast:anneal "Ship user authentication with OAuth2"

# or with Alloy (tournament consensus)
/anneal-alloy:anneal "Migrate database from SQLite to PostgreSQL"

# or with Temper (convergence loop, most thorough)
/anneal-temper:anneal "Redesign the notification pipeline"

04. INSTALL

01claude plugin marketplace add krzemienski/anneal
02claude plugin install anneal-cast@anneal-umbrella-dev (linear pipeline)
03claude plugin install anneal-alloy@anneal-umbrella-dev (tournament consensus)
04claude plugin install anneal-temper@anneal-umbrella-dev (convergence loop)
05Invoke /anneal-cast:anneal, /anneal-alloy:anneal, or /anneal-temper:anneal followed by your task description