/gsd rethink

What It Does

/gsd rethink opens a conversational session for restructuring your project’s milestone plan. It builds a full snapshot of your milestone landscape — statuses, dependencies, slice progress, and queue order — then turns Claude into a reorganisation assistant.

You can reorder priorities, park milestones you’re not ready for, discard work that’s no longer relevant, add new milestones, skip individual slices, and update dependency relationships — all through conversation.

/gsd rethink operates outside of auto-mode. It cannot run while auto-mode is active, and changes are applied interactively rather than through the automated pipeline.

Usage

/gsd rethink

No arguments. The command runs interactively — Claude presents your current milestone order and asks what you’d like to change.

How It Works

Rethink Flow

Snapshot Building

Before starting the conversation, the command builds two pieces of context:

1. Rethink data table — a structured summary including:

   • Summary counts: complete, active, pending, parked
   • Whether the queue order comes from an explicit QUEUE-ORDER.json or default numeric order
   • The active milestone, if any
   • A milestone table with: position, ID, title, status (with park reason if applicable), dependencies, and slice progress (done/total complete, N skipped)
   • Any dependency violations detected in the current order

2. Detailed milestone context — the full context for each milestone, including goals and scope, loaded via buildExistingMilestonesContext.

Session Behaviour

Once the context is assembled, Claude presents your milestones as a numbered list with status indicators and asks what you’d like to change. Each change is applied immediately to the filesystem. After each operation, Claude shows the updated order and asks if there’s anything else.

Destructive operations (discard) require explicit confirmation before proceeding.

Supported Operations

Operation	What Happens
Reorder	Writes .gsd/QUEUE-ORDER.json with the new milestone order
Park	Creates {ID}-PARKED.md in the milestone directory with a reason and timestamp
Unpark	Removes {ID}-PARKED.md to reactivate the milestone
Skip a slice	Marks a slice as skipped via gsd_skip_slice — auto-mode advances past it without executing
Discard	Permanently deletes the milestone directory and prunes it from QUEUE-ORDER.json
Add	Generates the next ID via gsd_milestone_generate_id, writes context via gsd_summary_save, positions it in QUEUE-ORDER.json
Update dependencies	Edits depends_on in the YAML frontmatter of the milestone’s {ID}-CONTEXT.md

Dependency Validation

Before applying any reorder, Claude validates the proposed order against dependency constraints:

• A milestone cannot be scheduled before any milestone it depends on (would_block)
• Circular dependencies are forbidden
• Dependencies on non-existent milestones are invalid (missing_dep)
• Completed milestones always satisfy dependencies regardless of position

If a proposed order would violate constraints, Claude explains the issue and suggests alternatives (remove the dependency, reorder differently, or park the blocker).

Bias Toward Parking

When a milestone has any completed slices or tasks, Claude is biased toward parking over discarding. Parking is reversible; discarding is not. Completed milestones cannot be parked — doing so would corrupt dependency satisfaction.

Gitignore-Aware Commit Instruction

If .gsd/ is gitignored in the project, Claude is told to skip committing planning artifacts. Otherwise, it is prompted to run git add .gsd/ && git commit -m "docs(gsd): rethink milestone plan" after changes are applied. Since rethink runs interactively outside auto-mode, no system auto-commit fires.

What Files It Touches

Reads

File	Purpose
.gsd/QUEUE-ORDER.json	Current explicit queue order (if present)
.gsd/milestones/MXXX/MXXX-CONTEXT.md	Milestone scope, goals, and depends_on frontmatter
.gsd/milestones/MXXX/MXXX-PARKED.md	Park status and reason
.gsd/milestones/MXXX/slices/SXX/SXX-PLAN.md	Slice content for context
GSD DB	Slice progress (complete/skipped counts) when available

Writes

File	Purpose
.gsd/QUEUE-ORDER.json	Updated execution order after reorder or add operations
.gsd/milestones/MXXX/MXXX-PARKED.md	Created on park, deleted on unpark
.gsd/milestones/MXXX/MXXX-CONTEXT.md	Updated depends_on frontmatter when dependencies are edited

Creates

File	Purpose
.gsd/milestones/MXXX/	New milestone directory when adding a milestone
.gsd/milestones/MXXX/MXXX-CONTEXT.md	Context file for a newly added milestone

Deletes

File	Purpose
.gsd/milestones/MXXX/	Entire milestone directory on discard
.gsd/milestones/MXXX/MXXX-PARKED.md	Removed when unparking

Examples

Starting a rethink session:

> /gsd rethink

● Building project snapshot for rethink...

Claude then presents something like:

Here's your current milestone plan:

1. ▶ M001 — Auth & user management (active, S02/S04 complete)
2. ⏳ M002 — Dashboard MVP (pending)
3. ⏳ M003 — Notifications (pending, depends on M001)
4. ⏸ M004 — Analytics (parked — blocked on data pipeline)
5. ⏳ M005 — Billing integration (pending)

What would you like to change?

Reordering to move billing before dashboard:

> Move M005 before M002

I'll update the queue order to: M001, M005, M002, M003, M004.

Checking dependencies... no violations found.

Updated order:
1. ▶ M001 — Auth & user management (active)
2. ⏳ M005 — Billing integration
3. ⏳ M002 — Dashboard MVP
4. ⏳ M003 — Notifications (depends on M001)
5. ⏸ M004 — Analytics (parked)

Anything else to adjust?

Parking a milestone:

> Park M003 — we're not building notifications this quarter

Parking M003 (Notifications) with reason: not building notifications this quarter.

Created .gsd/milestones/M003/M003-PARKED.md

Updated order:
1. ▶ M001 — Auth & user management (active)
2. ⏳ M005 — Billing integration
3. ⏳ M002 — Dashboard MVP
4. ⏸ M003 — Notifications (parked — not building notifications this quarter)
5. ⏸ M004 — Analytics (parked)

Anything else?

Related Commands

• /gsd park — park a single milestone without a full reorganisation session
• /gsd queue — view and manage the milestone execution queue
• /gsd discuss — gather context for a phase before planning
• /gsd new-milestone — start a new milestone cycle