discover

name: discover description: Frames a project or feature before implementation by capturing goals, constraints, stakeholders, and initial story candidates.

Discover

Use this skill at the start of a project, capability, or larger feature before system design or slice breakdown begins.

Responsibilities

1. Clarify the problem, desired outcomes, and non-goals.
2. Capture stakeholders, users, constraints, and assumptions.
3. Identify initial capabilities or story candidates.
4. Produce repository-first planning artifacts without creating execution slices.

Required Output

• <feature_path>/discover.md

Expected companion output for most canonical features:

• <feature_path>/user-stories.md

For subfeatures created by add-subfeature, the initial discover.md may already exist as a bootstrap scaffold marked by <!-- add-subfeature:discover-stub -->. Replace that stub with the real discovery packet instead of treating the placeholder as completed discovery.

Treat user-stories.md as the default, not the exception, when:

• the feature has multiple capabilities or story candidates
• later design, breakdown, or slice-traceability work is likely
• stable story IDs will help preserve traceability across subfeatures or slices

You may omit user-stories.md only when the discovery target is genuinely too small or too corrective to benefit from stable story IDs. If you omit it, record that choice explicitly in discover.md so downstream planning does not have to guess whether the omission was intentional.

Resolve <feature_path> from the repository planning layout:

<planning_dir>/<feature-slug>/

• If .skills/planning.json defines planning_dir, use that as <planning_dir>.
• Otherwise default to docs/features.

Discovery Rules

• Keep product thinking in the repository, not in slice-scoped execution artifacts.
• Record success criteria and constraints explicitly.
• Separate confirmed facts from assumptions and open questions.
• Name candidate stories in a way that later decomposition can preserve traceability.
• When the current feature or subfeature materially reshapes an existing workflow or planning surface, record what it supersedes, narrows, removes, or deliberately leaves additive and why.
• For workflow-shaping changes, identify any artifact movement or user-facing simplification expectations early instead of leaving them for review to infer.
• When reference-research.md exists for the current feature or subfeature, treat it as durable context for upstream-informed goals, constraints, and tradeoffs instead of re-deriving the same comparison in chat.
• Prefer writing explicit sections such as assumptions, resolved decisions, open questions, and candidate stories when they materially affect later design or breakdown work.

Discovery quality bar

Prefer explicit headings whenever the feature is large enough to benefit from them. For most canonical features, discover.md should cover:

• the problem and desired outcomes
• repository and reference context
• users, stakeholders, constraints, and risks
• scope boundaries and non-goals
• current workflow baseline and what the feature supersedes or narrows, when workflow shape is changing
• assumptions, open questions, and resolved decisions when they matter
• candidate stories and the next planning step

Do not treat that as a rigid required heading list. Small additive subfeatures may use a reduced form as long as the discovery still gives downstream design and breakdown enough durable context.

Recommended user-stories.md usage

When the feature is expected to continue into design and breakdown, create user-stories.md during discovery or immediately afterward. The goal is to stabilize story IDs early enough that later artifacts do not have to invent their own mapping.

Prefer:

• stable story IDs such as FEATURE-001
• concise user or system intent statements
• acceptance notes that can survive later decomposition
• enough scope to distinguish stories cleanly without turning the file into a slice plan

Workflow

1. Resolve <feature_path> from .skills/planning.json when planning_dir is present; otherwise use docs/features/<feature-slug>/, then identify or create the feature planning folder.
2. Inspect the repository, existing docs, optional reference-research.md, and other relevant context.
3. Write discover.md with explicit problem framing, actors, goals, constraints, risks, and next-step guidance.
4. Create user-stories.md with stable story identifiers unless the packet is intentionally too small for story-level planning; when omitting it, state why in discover.md.
5. For canonical features, run sirius manage-planning sync-status <feature-selector> --through discovery_ready so .planning-meta.json records that discovery is complete.
6. For subfeatures under .../subfeatures/<subfeature-id>/, do not try to force discovery_ready through manage_planning.py. Subfeature lifecycle stays in .subfeature-meta.json, authored discovery still leaves the raw subfeature at draft, and the next owner is typically assess.
7. Stop when the work is concrete enough for the next planning owner:
   • canonical feature: design
   • subfeature: usually assess

Guardrails

• Do not create slice-scoped execution slices.
• Do not promote proposals into canonical feature folders; use guide-planning for that transition first.
• Do not move directly into implementation planning.
• Do not treat a missing reference-research.md as a discovery blocker when the current planning target does not need research.
• Do not leave downstream planning to infer whether story IDs, workflow supersession, or current-baseline assumptions were intentionally omitted.
• If the request is already architecture-focused, hand off to design.