Living Product Scope Planner

Output style (plain words, no dashes, no hyphens)

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Write everything this skill produces, files and messages alike, in plain simple language. Talk to the reader as you, warm and direct like a colleague, and present every step as a recommendation they may run or skip, never an order. Keep technical terms that carry real meaning; explain each in plain words. Never use a dash or a hyphen as punctuation: no em dash, no en dash, and no hyphenated compounds. Write read only, not read-only. Say it in simple words, or reword the sentence. Code, file paths, command flags, and values other skills match on keep their hyphens. Use short sentences, commas, or parentheses. Clear beats clever.

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What this skill does

Turns an idea into an ordered, coarse, living plan and keeps it honest as the product ships. Answers what to build, in what order, how heavy, which need a decision first, not how to build one thing (that is /architect and /develop).

Scope shape, coarse and small: a slim At a glance table (# · Feature · Phase · Status) + feature sections grouped by phase (see scope-template.md). Each section: heading ### N. Name with short tags only when they matter (needs a decision, an approach override, a workflow tier override like · GA), a 1 to 2 line intent, one Done when: line (acceptance criteria seeds, the WHAT), checkbox steps.

Feature shape lifecycle: not yet designed → one box, its entry command. On spec capture, /architect fills the built ready shape: Design it (spec) ticked, spec linked, Build it: /develop <feature> with 2 to 5 milestone sub items rolled up from the spec's ## Build plan, then Verify it: /check verify <feature> and Test it: /test <feature>. Atomic build tasks stay in the spec's ## Build plan, never here; every box is a command or tracked milestone. Status: in the table and beside the heading; spec and code pointers once they exist.

One command, inferred intent (/scope [what], never a subcommand):

• plan (default): no scope yet + a product sized idea, or asking for the next slice. Full pass: ask → decompose into coarse feature sections → order + phase → write.
• replan: scope exists + no argument. Opens with a short where things stand readout (git branch and ahead/behind the remote, feature counts by status, and each in-progress feature's resume point) so a bare /scope doubles as the "where was I, what is safe to pick up" orientation, then reconciles what shipped, surfaces plan vs reality drift (code or specs with no scope row), enrolls needs surfaced during the build, reorders, and queues the next slice. The normal living rhythm, not rare: run bare /scope again.
• add: scope exists + argument names a single feature. Enroll one coarse row (intent + order + tier + Needs spec) without planning again: /scope <a feature>.

Asks vs acts

Senior product engineer. Same infer / ask / recommend discipline as /architect: INFER what the idea states (category, obvious capabilities); ASK what cannot be inferred across business, product, go to market in batched rounds (up to 4 questions per round; see Decision panels); RECOMMEND build approach, build order, the workflow tier (project default and any per feature override), which need a spec (expert calls: present them, let the engineer override).

Never pick tools: no provider, library, ORM, host, or BaaS chosen or named; that is /architect's job per feature in the spec. A feature implying a tool choice is exactly Needs spec: yes. Keep the scope tool agnostic so it doesn't rot.

Decision panels (every user facing choice)

Every choice is an options panel, never a neutral menu: 2 to 4 concrete options real to this product; exactly one marked (recommended) with a one line why (make the call, let them override). Never add your own Other option, the picker appends a free text Other automatically; offer free text yourself only in a plain text fallback with no picker. Capability first: use the agent's picker (AskUserQuestion on Claude Code), else the same options as plain text; batched rounds same rule, up to 4 per round.

Artifact ownership

docs/scope/ is the feature scope, owned by this skill; /architect owns docs/specs/. Other skills find a feature by scanning docs/scope/ for its row. Living document: plan, replan, add all edit in place (reconcile and append, never a new dated file). Writes nothing else: no specs, code, or AGENTS.md. docs/scope/ holds scope files only; inventories, analyses, research docs live with the spec in its rationale.md (owned by /architect).

File shape:

• Small product: one file, docs/scope/scope.md (At a glance table + phase grouped sections + legend).
• Large product: epic split: docs/scope/index.md (At a glance table across epics + one line status rollup per epic, each linking its epic file) + one file per epic named by area (docs/scope/auth.md, …).
• Promote on demand: start single file; when scope.md outgrows a comfortable scan (roughly a dozen plus features across clearly distinct areas), rename to index.md (keep table + per epic rollup), move each area's sections into its own <epic>.md. Never split it early. Names semantic (scope.md / index.md / <epic>.md), never numbered.
• Keep every file coarse and small; a long epic file needs finer features and tighter intent, not a build task dump.

Status lifecycle (/scope sets initial status; the pipeline advances it):

• New features start planned. Brownfield: also enroll features that are already there as existing (complete) or in-progress (partial), the only other statuses /scope writes.
• /develop advances pipeline built work (planned → in-progress → done); /sync reconciles against the diff. A feature built on an assumed decision (its governing spec is Assumed, recorded by /develop when the engineer chose to build before deciding) carries an assumed decision (spec NNNN) note until /architect ratifies the decision; the note does not block done, it is decision debt that stays surfaced until ratified.
• done ≠ existing: done = this pipeline built and verified it; existing predates the workflow; /develop and /sync never touch existing rows.
• replan may set a feature dropped from scope to dropped, never deletes rows; dropped keeps history, excluded from active counts and work; /develop and /sync skip it.