Issue Plan Slicer

Goal

Turn a broad plan into small, ordered, independently reviewable work items that an agent or maintainer can execute safely.

When to use

• The user asks to split a spec, roadmap item, issue, PRD, or migration into tasks.
• Work needs GitHub issue drafts, local markdown tasks, or agent-ready implementation slices.
• Dependencies, acceptance criteria, and validation need to be made explicit.

When not to use

• The user wants immediate implementation of a narrow task.
• The plan is still too ambiguous to slice and needs product discovery first.
• The user asks for live issue creation but has not authorized tracker mutations.

Inputs to inspect

• The source spec, issue, PRD, roadmap item, or conversation context.
• Existing docs/agents/issue-tracker.md, docs/agents/triage-labels.md, and docs/agents/validation.md when present.
• Existing issue templates and labels under .github/.
• Relevant ADRs and domain docs for boundaries and terminology.

Workflow

1. Identify the desired outcome and non-goals.
2. Extract dependencies, risky assumptions, validation commands, and docs impact.
3. Split work into vertical slices that can be reviewed independently.
4. Mark blockers and sequencing; avoid slices that require hidden context from prior tasks.
5. Draft each issue with title, scope, acceptance criteria, validation, and out-of-scope notes.
6. If the issue tracker is unknown, produce local markdown drafts instead of tracker-specific commands.
7. Ask before creating, labeling, assigning, or closing live issues.

Safety rules

• Do not mutate issue trackers without explicit user authorization.
• Do not create vague tasks such as "clean up code" without acceptance criteria.
• Do not hide critical dependencies in prose; make them part of the slice.
• Do not assume labels or project boards that are not documented.

References

Use downstream docs/agents/issue-tracker.md and docs/agents/triage-labels.md as hard dependencies for tracker-specific output. If they are missing, default to local markdown issue drafts.

Scripts

No bundled scripts.

Output format

Return:

1. Source plan summary
2. Proposed issue order
3. Issue drafts with title, scope, acceptance criteria, validation, and dependencies
4. Tracker assumptions
5. Open questions

Completion criteria

• Each slice can be implemented and reviewed independently.
• Dependencies and sequencing are explicit.
• Validation is attached to each slice.
• Live tracker mutation is either authorized and reported or not performed.

Failure modes

• If the plan is too ambiguous, ask targeted questions before slicing.
• If one slice grows too large, split it by observable behavior or ownership boundary.
• If tracker docs are missing, avoid tracker-specific labels and commands.