Issue-breakdown conductor

You conduct the issue-breakdown track defined in docs/issue-breakdown-track.md. Your job: gate between phases, dispatch the issue-breakdown specialist agent at .claude/agents/issue-breakdown.md, never do the agent's work yourself. Filed by ADR-0022 (docs/adr/0022-add-issue-breakdown-track.md).

Shared rules (gating, escalation, intake-gate, constraints common to all conductors): .claude/skills/_shared/conductor-pattern.md.

Read first

• docs/superpowers/specs/2026-05-02-issue-breakdown-design.md — source-of-truth spec.
• docs/issue-breakdown-track.md — methodology.
• templates/tasks-template.md — the layout the agent parses.
• memory/constitution.md — Articles I, II, VI, IX especially.

Inputs

• <issue-number> — required GitHub issue number passed as $ARGUMENTS.

What you do, step by step

Step 1 — Pre-flight

Confirm gh auth status succeeds. If not, surface to the user and exit.

Read the issue:

gh issue view <issue-number> --json number,title,body,labels,state,url

If state != "OPEN", hard-stop. Tell the user the issue must be open.

Step 2 — Resolve spec lineage

Dispatch the issue-breakdown agent with the issue payload. The agent attempts:

1. First specs/<slug>/ link in issue body.
2. spec:<slug> label.
3. Surface candidates.

If the agent returns multiple candidates, batch a single AskUserQuestion:

• One option per candidate specs/<slug>/ (recommended-first by last_updated).
• "Other" → free-text override (skip).

If the agent returns a single candidate, accept silently.

Step 3 — Verify gate

Agent reads specs/<slug>/workflow-state.md. If tasks.md status is not complete, hard-stop. Surface to the user: "run /spec:tasks first; this conductor only runs post-tasks".

Step 4 — Idempotency check

Agent searches for prior-run PRs via the slice-tag HTML comment.

If matches exist, batch one AskUserQuestion:

• Resume — open only the missing slices (Recommended).
• Re-plan — recompute slices and open new ones (existing PRs untouched).
• Abort.

If matches exist and the parent issue body has no <!-- BEGIN issue-breakdown:<slug> --> block, refuse and surface: "prior run detected (PRs #x #y) but issue body block missing — restore manually before re-running."

Step 5 — Parse tasks.md

Agent parses specs/<slug>/tasks.md and returns a slice list [{ordinal, scope, goal, task_ids[], dod[], blocked_by[], may_slice}].

If the agent returns parse-error, surface the offending heading to the user and exit.

Step 6 — Confirm slices

Batch one AskUserQuestion. Include the integration branch the agent resolved in Step 1 so the user can spot a Shape-A vs Shape-B mismatch before any PR is opened, and surface whether the slice list came from a real ## Parallelisable batches section or was synthesised because that section was absent (legacy tasks.md):

N slices computed from ## Parallelisable batches in tasks.md (or: tasks.md has no ## Parallelisable batches section — single batch synthesised from all tasks in document order):

• 01 — <goal> (T-AUTH-001, T-AUTH-005)
• 02 — <goal> (T-AUTH-002)
• …

Open N draft PRs against issue #<n>, branched off <integration-branch> (resolved from git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD)?

Options:

• Open N drafts (Recommended).
• Edit slicing — free-text "Other" answer; pass back to the agent as additional context for a re-parse with overrides.
• Abort.

If the agent returned just one slice, also offer Skip — open one PR by hand instead. Some single-slice flows are more friction than they save.

Step 7 — Per-slice loop

Hand off control fully to the agent. The agent walks the per-slice loop sequentially: branch → empty commit → push → draft PR. You wait.

If the agent returns a partial-failure outcome (rate limit, dirty tree mid-run, etc.), surface the failure and the recoverable PR list to the user. Idempotency on re-run will resume.

Step 8 — Update parent issue body

Agent renders and applies the sentinel-bracketed ## Work packages section to the issue body.

Step 9 — Audit log + hand-off note

Agent writes specs/<slug>/issue-breakdown-log.md and appends one dated line to the ## Hand-off notes section of specs/<slug>/workflow-state.md.

Step 9.5 — Persist audit edits on a housekeeping branch

Agent stages and commits both edits on a fresh chore/issue-breakdown-audit-issue-<n>-<runid> branch cut from <integration-branch>, pushes it, and opens a non-draft chore(issue-breakdown): record run for issue #<n> PR. This leaves the working tree clean for the next /issue:breakdown run (Step 1's git status --porcelain clean-tree gate would otherwise refuse) and surfaces the audit trail through the same review path as every other change in the repo. The housekeeping PR is independent of the slice PRs and safe to merge whenever convenient.

If the housekeeping push is denied (operator's permissions don't allow chore/*), surface the failure with the local commit SHA so the operator can rescue the audit trail manually.

Step 9.75 — Post-breakdown sync (non-fatal)

Invoke the issue-pr-sync skill (.claude/skills/issue-pr-sync/SKILL.md) with:

• stage: breakdown
• slug: <slug>
• draft_pr: read from specs/<slug>/workflow-state.md
• issue_number: read from specs/<slug>/workflow-state.md
• slice_prs: the list of PR numbers just opened (for populating the Tasks section)

If draft_pr is absent in workflow-state.md, the skill exits silently. If gh fails, the skill warns and returns — do not abort the /issue:breakdown run.

This step runs after Step 9.5 (housekeeping commit). The working tree is already clean; no git state is affected.

Step 10 — Report

Print a 4-line summary to the user:

• Path to feature folder.
• Count of slice PRs opened (with numbers).
• Housekeeping PR number (Step 9.5).
• Path to audit log.

Constraints (issue-breakdown-specific)

Generic conductor constraints + escalation pattern: .claude/skills/_shared/conductor-pattern.md. Specifics for this skill:

• Never invoke tracer-bullet at runtime. tasks.md is the input; it has already been produced upstream.
• Never modify tasks.md. If parse fails, the user fixes it (or re-runs /spec:tasks).
• Never open more than one PR per parallelisable batch (or per 🪓 may-slice task).
• Sequential PR creation only — no gh pr create parallelism.
• Phase 2 (operational bot at agents/operational/issue-breakdown-bot/) is a separate PR; do not invoke or import any Phase-2-only file.

Boundary with /spec:tasks

/spec:tasks produces tasks.md with ## Parallelisable batches. This skill consumes that artifact. Their boundary is:

• /spec:tasks decides what to build (slices, dependencies, DoD).
• /issue:breakdown decides how to track that work on GitHub (one PR per slice, parent issue as dashboard).

Do not bleed /issue:breakdown concerns back into /spec:tasks or vice versa.

References

• Design spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-05-02-issue-breakdown-design.md.
• Methodology: docs/issue-breakdown-track.md.
• ADR: docs/adr/0022-add-issue-breakdown-track.md.
• Tasks template: templates/tasks-template.md.
• Slicing primitive (consumed upstream by /spec:tasks): .claude/skills/tracer-bullet/SKILL.md.
• Sink: docs/sink.md.