Story refinement

Build shared understanding of one selected story, or several related stories whose boundaries need discussion. Record Goal, Scope, and Key examples in each story's seed.

Choose the workflow

If the parent problem, candidate selection, or story ordering needs reconsideration, use dough-story-decomposition. For smaller or clearer slices, use the project's execution-plan refinement workflow on the existing plan.

A refinement invocation authorizes slice planning of its story and landing the completed preparation under preparation journey; it authorizes no execution. Continue into planning without repeating answered questions.

Resolve required context

Identify this project's root, selected story links and seeds, and relevant prior decisions. When a seed is missing, resolve the canonical seed directory, ID and filename conventions, required metadata, and stable story-anchor convention. Resolve project paths from that repository, not this skill's location.

Resolve the project's slice-planning workflow for the continuation, and ADR context only when the architectural concern requires it under the reference below. If required context or a linked dependency is unavailable, name what is missing and stop the affected activity. Do not invent project paths or decisions.

Refine and continue

Read and follow planning scope and lifecycle for the conversation, scope decisions, optional UI and architecture detail, seed updates, and cleanup after implementation. When your instruction carries an established preparation, follow established preparation instead of the workspace and announcement steps below. When the request explicitly selects one-shot (--one-shot) for a queued story, follow one-shot refinement instead of the announcement step and the default disposition. Before writing to a story's seed, establish or reuse the required workspace under preparation workspace, then, for a queued story, announce the preparation assignment; refinement discussion and clarifying questions need neither on their own. After the seed or correction-home write records goal, scope, and key examples for a work item with a known identity, apply record preparation facts.

When the request includes options such as --explore, read refinement options and apply the selected options' instructions within this workflow. Options in the same group, an entry of that file's groups list, are exclusive; if a request names more than one of them, stop and report the conflict, naming the group's label and the flags the request named from it. Without options, refine straightforwardly.

Judge each selected story under judge the refinement outcome below, then continue a ready story into slice planning under preparation journey unless an open coordinator question or an explicit refine-only instruction (--refine-only) stops it. When this session ends, follow land at the end of preparation, then close or retain the workspace and finish under finish with only what needs a response. An execution instruction for this story that arrives while its preparation is unlanded follows hand off to execution in the same session instead.

Judge the refinement outcome

End each selected story with exactly one outcome. When several stories are refined together, judge each independently: a clear story keeps its result, and another story's open decision stays with that story.

• Ready for slice planning — goal, scope, and key examples are recorded, no decision you need from a person remains, and the work needs planned execution.
• Flawless — ready for execution — the same, and the story fits one planless slice under slice sizing, with no decisive premise, as slice planning defines it, left unobserved and no probe needed.
• Needs human engagement — at least one response from a person is required.

A ready outcome continues straight into slice planning under preparation journey; the seed and its recorded facts carry it.

When the invocation ends at the refinement result, on an explicit refine-only instruction (--refine-only) or at a one-shot refinement review, the ready outcome gives the story link, where the draft is (its workspace, and its result commit once committed), and one concrete next step: slice planning in that workspace, or, for Flawless, execution with an explicit instruction to skip slice planning. When the story already has an associated plan, the next step uses that plan instead of creating another. Do not recap what the seed records. Name the pending draft and any Preparing assignment as information, not as a request to keep them, and end without a question or approval request.

Needs human engagement lists each expected response separately: what must be answered or decided, who decides, your recommended answer when you have one, what waits meanwhile, and what continues once it is given. It covers an open goal, scope, or constraint decision; a boundary change such as splitting, merging, or dropping the story; missing required context; and a stopped write, recording, or landing. Claim no readiness. When required context is missing before the seed write, name the missing input and who can supply it, say which activity resumes afterwards, and do not claim that refinement was recorded.

The outcome is judged, not recorded. Recording still follows record preparation facts: refined, keeping an existing selected approach and plan association, otherwise an unselected approach. Flawless grants no planless authority; the developer supplies it by running the skip-planning next step. Judging an outcome neither creates nor renews ready and never selects planless; assess readiness at preparation completion still owns the assessment of the current story and any plan.