Turn plans, specifications, or conversations into small development tickets that each deliver verifiable behavior. Identify which tickets must finish first, review the breakdown together, and publish approved tickets to local files or the configured issue tracker.
Break a plan, spec, or the current conversation into a set of tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges, published to the configured tracker (edges as text in one file per ticket locally, or native blocking links on a real tracker).
Review the instructions the agent will receive before you install.
Break a plan, spec, or conversation into a set of tickets: tracer-bullet vertical slices, each declaring the tickets that block it.
The issue tracker and triage label vocabulary should have been provided to you. If not, tell the user to run /setup-matt-pocock-skills.
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.
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."
Break the work into tracer bullet tickets.
<vertical-slice-rules>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.
Present the proposed breakdown as a numbered list. For each ticket, show:
Ask the user:
Iterate until the user approves the breakdown.
Publish the approved tickets. How depends on the tracker /setup-matt-pocock-skills configured; the tickets are the same either way, only the shape of the blocking edges changes:
.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.ready-for-agent triage label 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>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
A reference to the parent issue on the tracker (if the source was an existing issue, otherwise omit this section).
The end-to-end behaviour this ticket makes work, from the user's perspective, not layer-by-layer implementation.
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.
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Choose which related skill to use and in what order for planning, building, debugging, or maintaining software. It explains routes through the available workflows and helps select the next step based on your situation and project size.
Coordinate subagents, separate agents assigned tasks, to pursue a long-running goal in one session. Maintain dialogue with the user while improving working conditions, shared rules, and access to information needed for future tasks.
Summarize an ongoing conversation and launch a fresh background agent to continue the work. The handoff includes the next focus, references to existing documents, and suggested skills, with sensitive information removed.
Review code changes from a chosen Git reference against two separate criteria: documented coding standards and the original requirements. Independent reviewers check each criterion, then present findings separately so convention problems and requirement gaps remain visible.
Design modules that offer substantial behavior through a small interface, the rules callers must understand. Use shared design terms to simplify usage, contain complexity, choose where implementations can vary, and make behavior easier to test.
Investigate difficult bugs and performance slowdowns by building a repeatable test or script that detects the exact symptom. Reduce the failing case, compare possible causes, and verify the fix with checks that catch the bug if it returns.