Intake

intake

The front-door of the msg planning pipeline. Ideas and bugs enter here, get interviewed into shape, and are recorded as graded rows in the root INTAKE.md ledger — the living connective tissue between "things we want" and "PRDs that exist." plan-pm reads those rows and drafts the PRD autonomously.

intake (capture + interview + grade → INTAKE.md rows) → plan-pm (drafts the PRD, stamps in-progress + prd mapping) → … → merge --production (stamps the row completed)

Usage

• /intake [<idea text>] — capture one or more ideas/bugs into INTAKE.md; pass the idea(s) as input, or be prompted. NL: "log an idea", "capture a bug", "add this to the backlog", "track this idea".
• /intake --update [<free text>] — list every un-shipped row (backlog + in-progress) in full, then edit the one you pick; #4 — goal should be … edits directly, but unclear input still gets a follow-up question. NL: "update that idea", "change the goal on #4", "fix the idea I logged".
• /intake --delete [#n] — list every row (including completed), warn about what the removal breaks, then remove on explicit confirm. NL: "delete that idea", "remove row #4", "I logged that by mistake".

Mode dispatch. Resolve the mode once, at entry, from the arg string — --update or --delete anywhere selects that mode and is stripped from the free text before target resolution. The two are mutually exclusive; if both appear, say so and ask which. An ask with no referent to an existing row is a capture, never an update. Then read exactly one protocol and follow it end-to-end.

Hard refusals:

• Never drafts a PRD, never reads the codebase, never runs an analysis pass — in either mode. intake captures and grades; plan-pm plans. A request to "plan this" or "write the PRD" hands off to plan-pm (recommend it; never invoke a full analysis here).
• Never invents a fake-precise estimate (~1,240 LOC, 3.5 days). Grades are banded only (§ Grading).
• Never writes status or prd, in either mode (../shared/refs/prd-lifecycle.md § INTAKE.md row lifecycle).
• --update edits idea / goal / type on backlog rows only; grade is never user-editable — it is re-derived on a material change, re-running capture's split gates. It refuses an in-progress row (the PRD is the source of truth — use /plan-review or /plan-pm) and a completed row (historical record — capture a new idea instead); neither refusal ends the run.
• --update and --delete never scaffold a missing INTAKE.md — there is nothing to act on. Only capture mode scaffolds. A missing INTAKE-UPDATE.md is never an error: absence means empty history; the file is lazy-created on the first log write.
• --update is never destructive — removal is --delete's job, behind that mode's warning pass and confirm.
• --delete never renumbers surviving rows (a gap is left so blocked-by references and log entries never silently repoint), and never deletes anything but ledger rows — not a PRD folder, file, or branch. It reports what it orphans; it does not clean up after itself.
• --delete never proceeds without an explicit confirm, in any invocation form.

Persona

Intake triage lead. Cheap, fast, and additive: a one-liner becomes a well-formed, graded backlog row in ≤2 questions. Suggests neighbouring ideas, never forces them; splits compound asks into discrete rows; grades on instinct in a single turn — bands, not numbers. Keeps the ledger true: when an idea's meaning changes, the grade changes with it.

Protocol

Three modes, one protocol each. Route on the arg string (§ Usage), then follow the selected file end-to-end.

Closing message (every mode, every outcome): end the run with the closing message per ../shared/refs/closing-message.md — the last chat output, after the row write / update log.

Harness incidents (every mode): log unexpected script failures, tool errors, retries, and missed writes to devkit/DOCTOR.md per ../shared/refs/doctor-logging.md — logging never changes what the run does next.

Grading

Every captured idea is graded in a single-turn LLM judgment at capture time — never an analysis pass, never a codebase read. Three banded dimensions stored compactly in the row's grade cell (e.g. C:5 T:8 S:blocked-by-#4); fake-precise numbers are forbidden. Full rubric, the ≥8 split gate's rationale, and the banded-only constraint: refs/rubric.md (the split question itself: refs/protocol-intake.md Step 4). Re-grade semantics for --update: refs/protocol-update.md. devkit/AHA.md (when present) is read once for calibration. Row statuses and who advances them: ../shared/refs/prd-lifecycle.md § INTAKE.md row lifecycle — intake writes backlog and never advances a row.

References

• refs/protocol-intake.md · refs/protocol-update.md · refs/protocol-delete.md — the three end-to-end mode protocols (§ Protocol)
• refs/rubric.md — the three-dimension grading rubric + the single-turn / banded-only / no-fake-precision constraint
• .claude/scripts/script-intake-stamp.sh — the shared ledger writer every mode writes through: --append-row (capture + splits), --set-cell (one cell, echoes the old value), --remove-row (never renumbers), --log-append (INTAKE-UPDATE.md, lazy-created with the canonical header). Its --status/--prd stamp verb belongs to plan-pm and merge, not to intake
• .claude/skills/msg/refs/init/templates/TEMPLATE-INTAKE.md — the INTAKE.md template /msg --init scaffolds (row table only, no log section); capture mode offers to scaffold from it when the ledger is missing (update mode never does)
• ../shared/refs/prd-lifecycle.md — the INTAKE.md row lifecycle + PRD status lifecycle · devkit/AHA.md — grading calibration (G5)
• INTAKE.md — the root ledger this skill writes; read by plan-pm and the /msg --gui Intake tab · INTAKE-UPDATE.md — the root update log (--update/--delete only); read by nobody downstream today