Expand Backlog

Core responsibilities:

• Read the specified backlog item
• Research the architecture docs to understand scope
• Interview user about breakdown preferences
• Break into sequential sub-items
• Update BACKLOG.md with the expanded structure

Flow: Read Item → Research → Interview → Propose → Confirm → Update BACKLOG.md

Reads:

• ./.gtd/BACKLOG.md — Current backlog
• ./.gtd/ARCHITECTURE.md — System design, services, responsibilities
• ./.gtd/STACK_DECISION.md — Technology constraints

Updates:

• ./.gtd/BACKLOG.md — Adds sub-items under the parent

Small Enough to Execute

Each sub-item should be completable in one /s:spec → /roadmap → /execute cycle.

Sequential Order

Sub-items are numbered. They must be done in order.

Clear Dependencies

If a sub-item depends on something outside this parent, note it.

Propose, Don't Ask

Make decisions and propose. Only ask about genuinely unclear items.

Sub-Item Format

1.  [ ] **{parent}/{sub-name}** — {description}

• Prefix with parent name (e.g., audio-gateway/setup-project)
• Keep description to one line
• Sub-items are numbered (order matters)

1. Validate Arguments

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
    echo "Error: Item name required. Usage: /expand-backlog {item-name}"
    exit 1
fi

2. Find Item in Backlog

Read ./.gtd/BACKLOG.md and find the item matching $ARGUMENTS.

If not found: Error with available items. If already expanded: Ask if user wants to re-expand.

3. Research the Item

Read architecture docs from .gtd/:

From .gtd/ARCHITECTURE.md:

• What does this item need to do?
• What are the responsibilities?
• What are the dependencies?
• What are the logical phases?

From .gtd/STACK_DECISION.md:

• What technologies are specified?
• What constraints apply?

4. Propose Breakdown

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 GTD ► PROPOSED BREAKDOWN: {item-name}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

I'll break **{item-name}** into:

1. **{item}/{sub-1}** — {description}
2. **{item}/{sub-2}** — {description}
3. **{item}/{sub-3}** — {description}
...

Assumptions I have made, please verify:
- {assumption 1}
- {assumption 2}

**Unclear items (need your input):**
- {unclear item, if any — or "None"}

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Please review. (ok / adjust: ...)

Wait for confirmation.

5. Update BACKLOG.md

Transform the parent item and add sub-items:

Before:

2. [ ] **audio-gateway** — Opus decoding, VAD, S3 upload

- **Source:** MICROSERVICE_RECOMMENDATION.md#audio-gateway
- **Tech:** Rust, Tokio, Axum
- **Responsibilities:**
  - Decode Opus to PCM
  - Run VAD
  - Upload to S3

After:

2. [~] **audio-gateway** — Opus decoding, VAD, S3 upload

- **Source:** MICROSERVICE_RECOMMENDATION.md#audio-gateway
- **Tech:** Rust, Tokio, Axum
- **Responsibilities:**
  - Decode Opus to PCM
  - Run VAD
  - Upload to S3
- **Sub-items:**
  1. [ ] **audio-gateway/project-setup** — Initialize Rust project with Tokio, Axum
  2. [ ] **audio-gateway/opus-decoder** — Implement Opus to PCM decoding
  3. [ ] **audio-gateway/vad-integration** — Add SpeakerGate VAD
  4. [ ] **audio-gateway/s3-upload** — Upload speech segments to S3
  5. [ ] **audio-gateway/kafka-events** — Emit gateway.speech.events

Rules:

• Parent status changes to [~] (in progress)
• Sub-items are listed under **Sub-items:** section
• Sub-items are numbered (order matters)
• Sub-item names are prefixed with parent name

7. Display Summary

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 GTD ► ITEM EXPANDED ✓
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Parent: {item-name}
Sub-items: {N}

─────────────────────────────────────────────────────
▶ Next Up
/s:spec — start the first sub-item
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────