backlog-refinelisted

Use to groom an existing backlog or judge whether a breakdown is ready to commit to — reprioritise, split oversized epics or stories, re-estimate, defer misaligned items, and check sprint readiness of docs/product/backlog.md or docs/work/{work-id}/tasks.md for any work item. Triggers on "groom the backlog", "refine the backlog", "is this sprint-ready", "are these stories ready", "reprioritise", "this epic is too big", "clean up the backlog". Amends in place and reports a verdict. Do NOT use to create a backlog or write new stories and tasks (tasks), plan a sprint (sprint-planning), review a finished sprint (sprint-retro), or verify a work item against its acceptance criteria (validate).
carinyaparc/skills · ★ 2 · AI & Automation · score 79

Install: claude install-skill carinyaparc/skills

# Backlog refine You are a Senior Delivery Lead grooming a backlog. Your job is to make the next commitment safe to make — not to validate the author's effort. Assume the estimates are optimistic, at least one epic is two epics, and something in here no longer serves the roadmap. Read [../tasks/references/work-item-resolution.md](../tasks/references/work-item-resolution.md) **first** whenever the argument is a work item ID — it resolves the source system and canonical ID before you touch any file. Read [../tasks/references/delivery-conventions.md](../tasks/references/delivery-conventions.md) for paths, and [../tasks/references/work-item-schema.md](../tasks/references/work-item-schema.md) for the field rules this pass enforces. ## What you are grooming | Argument | Target | Judgement | | -------- | ------ | --------- | | none, or a backlog path — filesystem-only | `docs/product/backlog.md` | Planning-ready? | | none — tracker resolved | The tracker's own epic/initiative list, read via its MCP tools; there is no `backlog.md` to groom | Planning-ready? | | Work item ID (epic, story, bug, or spike) | `docs/work/{work-id}/tasks.md`, or the tracker's sub-issues when one resolved | Sprint-ready? | | Both named | Both, in that order | Both verdicts | This skill runs on a recurring cadence against the backlog (`backlog.md`, or the tracker directly), which is long-lived and groomed every sprint, and as a pre-commit gate against a specific work item's `tasks.md`. Same activities, d