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 what epic-runner picks up: it works the frontier one ticket at a time, so the blocking edges you set here are the order the work actually runs in.

The tracker. Read TRACKER.md beside the repo's engineer skill — it names the tracker, gives its commands, and maps meanings to this repo's label strings. If there is none, resolve the tracker for this run from what the user gave you, the git remote, and whichever CLI is installed and authenticated; default to a directory of local markdown files when nothing resolves.

The engineer skill's directory varies by harness, so find it by glob:

ls */skills/*-engineer/TRACKER.md .*/skills/*-engineer/TRACKER.md 2>/dev/null

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 vocabulary, and respect ADRs in the area you're 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.

• 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 should be 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 to the tracker

Publish the approved tickets. How depends on the tracker — the tickets are the same either way, only the shape of the blocking edges changes:

• Local files → write one file per ticket under the directory TRACKER.md names, defaulting to .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, GitLab, Jira, 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 the label TRACKER.md names for agent-ready work unless instructed otherwise — the tickets are agent-grabbable by construction. If it names no such label, skip the labelling and say so.

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.

6. Leave a handle on the whole set

Individual tickets are not something a downstream orchestrator can pick up — epic-runner takes one reference and lists the tickets under it. So finish by giving the set a single handle and telling the user what it is:

• Local files → write a checklist beside the ticket files, at <dir>/issues.md, one - [ ] line per ticket in dependency order naming its file. That checklist is the handle; the per-ticket files hold the detail.
• A real tracker → group the issues under whatever container this tracker has — a milestone, a shared label, a parent tracking issue, a Jira epic. Say which you used.

Then state the handle plainly, e.g. "run /epic-runner .scratch/csv-export/issues/issues.md" — that string is the whole point of this step.

—

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

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 a prototype produced a snippet that encodes a decision more precisely than prose can (state machine, reducer, schema, 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.

Adapted from mattpocock/skills, MIT © 2026 Matt Pocock. Keep this line if you copy this file.