Load the backlog
Turn intent into backlog items. One item becomes exactly one story and one implementation plan, so an item that cannot be built alone is a defect introduced here, not downstream.
Nothing in the pipeline decomposes a document. This skill is the only place slicing happens.
Procedure
1. Establish the source
- A document path — read it in full before slicing. A long design document usually names its own slices: migration plans, acceptance criteria, and keep/reshape/retire sections are where stories come from, not the narrative chapters.
- A description — ask what the observable outcome is, then slice.
- Neither — ask which it is.
Refuse to slice from a summary. Read the actual source.
2. Slice
Apply the tests in references/slicing.md. Each candidate item must state an
observable outcome, be buildable while every other item does not yet exist, and be
verifiable by the project's own test command.
A document of any size usually yields a handful of first items, not thirty. Prefer depth over coverage: the items that unblock everything else, sliced properly, beat an exhaustive shallow list.
3. Present before writing
Show the proposed items as a table — id, title, one-line outcome, and what it explicitly does not include. Ask for corrections. Slicing is a judgement the operator owns; this skill proposes.
4. Write the items
One file per item at .squad/backlog/<id>-<slug>.md, id zero-padded and sequential
from the highest existing id:
---
id: 003
title: Persist review snapshots to the registry
status: open
story_id: null
---
## Outcome
One sentence naming what becomes observably true.
## In scope
The behaviour this item owns.
## Not in scope
Every neighbouring item by name, and the behaviour each of them owns.
## Ports
Behaviour this item must name but not build, and the dummy state that lets it run
alone.
## Acceptance
What must hold for this item to be finished, in terms the project's tests can check.
The Not in scope and Ports sections are what keep the analyst honest later.
An item without them will produce a plan that assumes unbuilt work exists.
5. Do not start anything
Writing items never starts them. Report the ids written and point at
/swarmforge:squad-start.
When the source lives elsewhere
Agents read the repository they run in. A document outside the working tree — in another worktree, or outside the repo — is invisible to them. Either copy it into the tree, or carry the relevant text into the item bodies, which do travel. Say which was done.
Additional resources
references/slicing.md— the INVEST tests, vertical-slice heuristics, and the failure modes that produce unbuildable items.../squad-pipeline/references/state.md— the backlog item format and the rest of the on-disk contract.