To Tickets

To Tickets

Break a plan, spec, or conversation into a set of tickets - tracer-bullet vertical slices, each declaring the tickets that block it.

These are buildable implementation tickets - distinct from /wayfinder's investigation tickets (which resolve open decisions, not ship features) and from the .tars/issues/ backlog files the /backlog-* skills generate and consume (a separate ticket-automation pipeline this skill does not write to).

Work from your project's conventions: its issue tracker (GitHub via gh, Linear, or local files), triage label vocabulary, domain glossary, and any ADRs in the area you are touching. If those conventions have not been established, ask the user before publishing.

Process

1. Gather context

Work from whatever is already in the conversation context. If the user passes a reference (a spec path, an issue number or URL) as an argument, fetch it and read its full body and comments.

2. Explore the codebase (optional)

If you have not already explored the codebase, do so to understand the current state of the code. Ticket titles and descriptions should use the project's domain glossary, and respect any ADRs in the area you are touching.

Look for opportunities to prefactor the code to make the implementation easier. "Make the change easy, then make the easy change."

3. Draft vertical slices

Break the work into tracer bullet tickets.

Vertical slice rules:

• Each slice cuts a narrow but COMPLETE path through every layer (schema, API, UI, tests) - vertical, NOT a horizontal slice of one layer.
• A completed slice is demoable or verifiable on its own.
• Each slice is sized to fit in a single fresh context window.
• Any prefactoring is done first.

Give each ticket its blocking edges - the other tickets that must complete before it can start. A ticket with no blockers can start immediately.

Wide refactors are the exception to vertical slicing. A wide refactor is one mechanical change - rename a column, retype a shared symbol - whose blast radius fans across the whole codebase, so a single edit breaks thousands of call sites at once and no vertical slice can land green. Don't force it into a tracer bullet; sequence it as expand–contract. First expand: add the new form beside the old so nothing breaks. Then migrate the call sites over in batches sized by blast radius (per package, per directory), each batch its own ticket blocked by the expand, keeping CI green batch to batch because the old form still exists. Finally contract: delete the old form once no caller remains, in a ticket blocked by every migrate batch. When even the batches can't stay green alone, keep the sequence but let them share an integration branch that all block a final integrate-and-verify ticket - green is promised only there.

4. Quiz the user

Present the proposed breakdown as a numbered list. For each ticket, show:

• Title: short descriptive name
• Blocked by: which other tickets (if any) must complete first
• What it delivers: the end-to-end behaviour this ticket makes work

Ask the user:

• Does the granularity feel right? (too coarse / too fine)
• Are the blocking edges correct - does each ticket only depend on tickets that genuinely gate it?
• Should any tickets be merged or split further?

Iterate until the user approves the breakdown.

5. Publish the tickets

Publish the approved tickets. How depends on the tracker your project uses - the tickets are the same either way; only the shape of the blocking edges changes:

• Local files → write one file per ticket under scratch/<feature-slug>/issues/<NN>-<slug>.md, numbered from 01 in dependency order (blockers first). Each file's "Blocked by" lists the numbers/titles it depends on. Use the per-ticket file template below - one ticket per file, never a single combined file.
• A real issue tracker (GitHub, Linear, …) → publish one issue per ticket in dependency order (blockers first) so each ticket's blocking edges can reference real identifiers. Use the platform's native blocking / sub-issue relationship where it has one; otherwise set each ticket's "Blocked by" to the blocking issues. Apply your project's ready-for-agent triage label (or its equivalent) unless instructed otherwise - the tickets are agent-grabbable by construction.

Work the frontier: any ticket whose blockers are all done. For a purely linear chain that means top to bottom.

Do NOT close or modify any parent issue.

Local ticket template

# <NN> - <Ticket title>

**What to build:** the end-to-end behaviour this ticket makes work, from the
user's perspective - not a layer-by-layer implementation list.

**Blocked by:** the numbers/titles of the tickets that gate this one, or
"None - can start immediately".

**Status:** ready-for-agent

- [ ] Acceptance criterion 1
- [ ] Acceptance criterion 2

Issue template

## Parent

A reference to the parent issue on the tracker (if the source was an existing
issue, otherwise omit this section).

## What to build

The end-to-end behaviour this ticket makes work, from the user's perspective -
not layer-by-layer implementation.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] Criterion 1
- [ ] Criterion 2

## Blocked by

- A reference to each blocking ticket, or "None - can start immediately".

In either form, avoid specific file paths or code snippets - they go stale fast. Exception: if exploratory prototyping produced a snippet that encodes a decision more precisely than prose can (a state machine, reducer, schema, or type shape), inline it and note briefly that it came from a prototype. Trim to the decision-rich parts - not a working demo, just the important bits.

Work the frontier one ticket at a time with /implement, clearing context between tickets.

Adapted from mattpocock/skills (MIT).