Stories, Not Braindumps

The test

A draft is a story if a designer, PM, or new engineer can read it cold and tell what's changing and why it matters. Otherwise it's a braindump — fine as a note to self, not yet a contract between roles.

Step 1: Story or Task?

• Story — has a user, a value, and a "so that". A human (customer, operator, admin, internal user) benefits from the change.
• Task — has no direct user-facing value. Library upgrade, CI chore, dead code removal, infra migration. Real work, but no one will ask "what did this deliver?"

If the work touches a user-visible outcome, force it through the Story shape even if the engineer wrote it as a Task. "Migrate auth middleware to v2" is the implementation; "Users stay signed in across tab reloads" is the story.

Step 2: Rewrite using the Connextra template

As a <role>, I want <goal>, so that <value>.