user-story-mappinglisted

# User Story Mapping Turns a vague goal, brief, or messy backlog into a **sliced, prioritized delivery plan** with per-persona user stories. The map is the team's **test playbook in skeletal form**: every backbone activity becomes an E2E swimlane, every slice-1 story becomes ≥1 Gherkin scenario (pinned down in Steps 4a/4b). It runs as **one re-entrant loop**. This file is the answer-first spine — the routing-and-contract layer. Read it once at invocation start; load a step's reference only when you reach that step; never pre-read a reference or read one twice. ## The loop Each run discovers what already exists, diffs it against the desired map, and **materializes the delta** in place. **Starting from scratch is the same loop with empty data sources** — the diff is against nothing, so the delta is the whole map. There is no greenfield/brownfield branch; only the data differs, never the steps. ``` ① DISCOVER → ② DIFF → ③ APPLY PREFERENCES → ④ SIMULATE → ⑤ INTERVIEW ──approved?──no──► back to ① │ yes ▼ ⑥ BACKBONE → ⑦ GENERATE/UPDATE → ⑧ DERIVE + HAND OFF ``` **Loop ↔ Step mapping** for the table further down: ①=Step 0, ②=part of Step 0/0.5, ③=Step 0 (apply saved prefs), ④=Step 0.3, ⑤=Step 0.4, ⑥=Step 1, ⑦=Steps 2–4b, ⑧=Steps 5–6. 1. **Discover** (Step 0) — scan data sources cheapest-first; t