User Story Skill

Purpose

Translate PRD skill artifacts into flow-oriented user steps and a stable, machine-consumable story map plus a human-readable summary. Preserve explicit user-provided lists verbatim, keep IDs stable, and surface ambiguities with targeted questions instead of guessing. Proactively ask clarifying questions whenever decisions affect flows, scope, or traceability; provide up to 3 options with pros/cons so the user can decide. Enable downstream planning without making architecture or implementation decisions.

Position in the Flow (Boundary)

Stay between PRD refinement and architecture/technical design. Do not decide components, services, APIs, data models, or infrastructure. Output structured flows, stories, and traceability that downstream architecture skills can consume. The architecture skill should be able to ingest the story map artifacts directly without additional transformation.

Inputs

Expect every artifact produced by the PRD skill and use them as authoritative sources. Explain each input and how it is used:

• normalized_prd_markdown (required): produced by the PRD skill. Use it to read narrative context, journeys, and any explicit lists or constraints that must be preserved verbatim.
• prd_packet_json (required): produced by the PRD skill (valid against the PRD packet schema). Use it as the structured source of FR/NFR IDs, acceptance criteria, and embedded handoff data.
• prd_handoff_contract (required): produced by the PRD skill and located at prd_packet_json.handoff_user_story_mapper. Use it as the authoritative list of actors, epics, candidate stories, release slices, and open questions. This contract is embedded inside the PRD packet (not a separate file) unless explicitly emitted by the PRD skill as a standalone section.
• optional_context (optional): provided by the user or system. Use it to resolve ambiguities, add constraints, or clarify flow ordering.
• prior_story_map (optional): prior story map artifact. Use it to keep story IDs stable across iterations.

If any required artifact is missing or incomplete, ask the user targeted questions immediately and proceed with best-effort placeholders labeled as TBD (see Failure Modes). When asking questions, offer up to 3 concrete options with pros/cons and ask which option should be used.