Choose a tracker integration for brief intake¶

You have work tracked in a project board or issue tracker and want to turn it into a product brief that feeds the spec-driven build pipeline. Use this guide to choose the right intake skill.

Decision table¶

Once the brief is created, all paths converge at receive-brief to elicit missing fields, decompose into specs, and hand off to work-loop.

One issue is not a brief¶

If the input is a single issue with no container (no milestone, no sub-issues, no Feature children), that is one feature — use new-spec directly. The intake skills will recommend this redirect and wait for your confirmation.

No tracker — author-brief¶

When to use it: you have unstructured input — an email, a stakeholder message, a Slack thread, a verbal description — that describes multi-feature work and is not yet a formatted brief.

Prerequisites: core pack installed.

What it does: extracts signal from whatever you paste in, elicits missing Definition of Ready fields conversationally, and writes a draft brief to docs/product/briefs/<slug>.md.

How to invoke it: tell your agent about the work — paste the email or describe the scope. The author-brief skill fires automatically on unstructured brief-level input.

Full guide: Intake an external brief

GitHub — github-brief-intake¶

When to use it: work is organised as a GitHub Milestone with related Issues.

Prerequisites: - github pack installed - gh CLI installed (cli.github.com) - For private repos: gh auth login

What it does: pulls all Issues under the Milestone via gh, maps them to Shape B user stories (US-n (#NNN)), stamps the Milestone URL as the Epic: provenance pointer, writes the brief, and hands off to receive-brief.

How to invoke it:

github-brief-intake

Full guide: Intake a GitHub Milestone as a brief

Linear — linear-brief-intake / linear-brief-sync¶

When to use it: work is organised in a Linear Issue (with sub-issues) or a Linear Project.

Prerequisites: - linear pack installed - Linear Personal API Key stored via credential-setup (namespace linear, key API_KEY) - Verify with linear: check

What it does: - First time: linear-brief-intake LIN-123 fetches the Issue and its sub-issues, maps them to Shape B stories (US-n (LIN-NNN)), stamps the owning Project URL as Epic:, registers the brief under [brief_queue].draft in workspace.toml, and hands off to receive-brief. - After a review round changes the Linear Issue: linear-brief-sync LIN-123 docs/product/briefs/<slug>.md re-fetches and shows you section-level before/after diffs; writes only the fields you approve.

Full guide: When to use linear-brief-intake vs linear-brief-sync

Jira — jira-brief-intake¶

When to use it: work is organised in a Jira Epic.

Prerequisites: - atlassian pack installed - Jira credentials stored via credential-setup (namespace jira) - Verify with jira: check

What it does: fetches the Epic and its child Issues via the jira skill, maps them to Shape B user stories (US-n (PROJ-NNN)), stamps the Epic URL as Epic:, writes the brief to docs/product/briefs/<slug>.md, and hands off to receive-brief. 1-way intake only — never writes to Jira.

How to invoke it: tell your agent: "Turn PROJ-100 into a brief."

Jira Align — jira-align-brief-intake¶

When to use it: work is organised in a Jira Align Feature (program-level delivery unit — not to be confused with a Jira Software Epic, which maps to a Jira Align Feature).

Prerequisites: - atlassian pack installed - Jira Align credentials stored via credential-setup (namespace jira-align) - Customise references/field-mapping.md in the skill directory for your instance's workflow state vocabulary and Program Increment cadence before first use.

What it does: fetches the Feature and its child stories, tasks, and defects via the jira-align skill, maps children to Shape B user stories (US-n (stories/<id>)), stamps the Feature ID as the Epic: provenance pointer, writes the brief, and hands off to receive-brief. 1-way intake only.

How to invoke it: tell your agent: "Turn Jira Align Feature 4521 into a brief."

After intake — the common path¶

Regardless of which intake path you used, receive-brief takes over from the draft brief:

1. Elicit — fills missing Outcome / Scope conversationally.
2. Decompose — cuts stories into independently shippable specs; confirms the cut.
3. Execute — chains new-spec → work-loop per spec; stamps Brief: and Satisfies: US-n back-links.

See Receive a product brief and decompose it into specs.

See also¶

• Tracker vocabulary — how the same concept maps across GitHub, Linear, Jira, and Jira Align.
• Product brief fields — the full field list for a product brief.