Plan Definition

Turn a spark into a clear product definition through a guided discovery phase — the most upstream step of the workflow, for the product-owner persona. It runs before plan-backlog and closes the loop define → backlog → ticket → PR.

plan-backlog starts from a defined problem and turns it into a backlog; its framing step is deliberately light ("how do we slice this"). plan-definition does the deep part: defining the problem itself — who it's for, the outcome, why now, the constraints, the success metrics, the chosen direction. Its output is a definition doc, not a backlog and not tickets. You facilitate the PO's thinking — ask, offer options, and let them decide; never decide the product for them.

Trigger

A request to define, frame, scope, or think through a product idea before there are stories — e.g. "help me define this feature", "I have a rough idea, let's shape it", "what's the problem we're solving here". If the request is already a defined problem asking for tickets, that's plan-backlog, not this.

Boundary with plan-backlog (important)

• plan-definition = define the problem & direction. No backlog, no tickets. Output: a product definition.
• plan-backlog = turn a defined problem into a backlog. When a definition from here is handed in, it consumes it and runs a lighter framing (confirm, don't re-derive) instead of framing from scratch.

1. Intake — read the spark in whatever form it arrives

The input is deliberately vaguer than plan-backlog's — a one-liner is a valid start.

• Pasted text / chat description → use directly.
• PDF → read it (page range as needed).
• Word (.docx) → convert first (textutil -convert txt file.docx -output - on macOS, or pandoc file.docx -t markdown), then read. If neither tool is available, ask the user to paste the text or export a PDF.
• Artifact / Confluence page / URL → fetch it.
• Figma link (figma.com/(design|file)/…) → run figma-fetch for design context. For a FigJam board, figma-fetch doesn't read /board/ URLs yet — ask the PO to paste the board's content as text. v1 treats any whiteboard as read-only context; nothing is written back to it.

If the spark is thin, that's expected — the framing step (§2) is where you draw it out with questions, not where you fill it in for the PO. See Grounding & provenance next; it governs the whole flow.

Grounding & provenance (the core rule — read before drafting)

A one-liner is a valid start, so most of what a definition could contain is not in the intake. That is fine — but it makes how you introduce content the thing that keeps this honest. Two moves that look identical on the page are completely different:

• Generating options for the PO to choose — proposing 2–4 framings, directions, or candidate answers and letting the PO pick — is the point of this skill. Do it freely.
• Asserting facts about the world the PO didn't give you — "no mainstream app does X", "this is why people churn", "the market for Y is underserved", a specific metric target — is fabrication when stated as established. You cannot verify market, prior-art, or novelty claims here; the skill has no research step. So:
  • Offer them as the PO's to confirm ("is it true that…?"), or
  • Mark them unverified in the definition, or
  • Leave them out.

Every claim in the definition carries a provenance marker so a proposal never renders identically to a decision:

• [PO] — the PO stated or explicitly confirmed it.
• [spark] — it came from the intake source.
• [proposed] — you generated it; the PO accepted the option but the content is yours.
• [unverified] — a factual claim about the world that nobody has checked (all market/novelty/prior-art claims are at least this).

The distinction to never blur: a direction the PO selected from your options is a real decision; a fact you supplied to justify it is not, until it's checked. When in doubt, mark it lower, not higher.

2. Frame the problem (zoom-out) — guided questions, proposed answers

Draw out the definition through a Socratic exchange: for each dimension, ask, propose a candidate answer, and let the PO confirm or adjust. Proposing candidates is exactly right (see Grounding & provenance) — just don't smuggle in unverifiable facts as if they were established (mark those [unverified] or ask). Offer options; don't assume. Move through:

• Users / audience — who is this for, and who is it not for?
• Problem / outcome — what problem, and what does success look like for the user?
• Why now — the trigger or opportunity.
• Constraints — technical, time, budget, compliance, existing systems.
• Success metrics — how we'll know it worked (leading + lagging where possible).
• Risks / unknowns — what could break the thesis; what we still don't know.
• Non-goals — explicitly out of scope, to keep the definition sharp.

Don't interrogate all seven in one dump — work them conversationally, a few at a time, folding the PO's answers back in. It's fine — often better — to leave an item explicitly unresolved rather than force an answer: any must-have section may carry "not established" with a note on what's needed to settle it (see §4). This applies especially to Success metrics, which POs frequently decline — record "not established (no baseline yet)", never a number you made up.

No research step. The skill fetches only PO-supplied sources (§1); it does not browse. So when a dimension turns on a fact you'd normally look up — "which segment is underserved?", "has anyone shipped this?" — you cannot answer it as fact. Say so, offer it as a question for the PO or a later research task, and mark any market/novelty claim [unverified]. Confidently reciting a competitive map from memory is the failure mode this rule exists to prevent.

3. Directions & trade-offs (zoom-in)

Propose 2–4 solution directions (as many as the situation needs, no padding). Note the object here is different from plan-backlog's framing: this is what the product is / which approach (e.g. rehab-adherence vs. general fitness; a novel core mechanic vs. a known one), not how to slice the work into a backlog — that stays downstream. Give each its trade-offs (cost, risk, time-to-value, reversibility). Recommend one with a reason, and wait for the PO to choose or refine. Ground the trade-offs the same way as everything else: option-generation is fine, but any supporting fact is [proposed]/[unverified] until the PO confirms it.

The flow is not forward-only: if, while assembling §4, the PO wants to revisit or withdraw the direction chosen here, go back and re-open §3 rather than editing around a decision that no longer holds. A definition whose Chosen direction was silently un-decided is worse than one that loops back.

4. Produce the definition (approval-gated)

Assemble a structured product definition / brief. Every line carries its provenance marker ([PO] / [spark] / [proposed] / [unverified], per Grounding & provenance) — this is what stops an approved doc from reading as sourced when it isn't. Any must-have section the PO didn't settle is recorded as "not established" with a note on what would settle it — never invented to avoid a gap.

Canonical template — must-have sections:

• Problem statement — one or two sentences.
• Target users — and non-users.
• Goals and Non-goals.
• Success metrics — or "not established" (POs often decline; that's a valid state, a fabricated number is not).
• Chosen direction — plus the alternatives considered and why this one.
• Key decisions — the calls made during framing, each with its rationale and who made it (a call the PO delegated to you is marked [proposed], not rendered like one they made).
• Risks / unknowns — what the definition rests on that could be wrong, including every [unverified] claim that survived into the doc. Must-have: this is the section that qualifies the confident ones, so it can't be optional.
• Open questions — what's still undecided.

Optional sections when the material warrants: constraints, why-now, dependencies, a rough phasing sketch.

Approval gate (mandatory). Present the full definition and wait for explicit approval; the PO may edit anything. Before asking for the OK, ask one grounding question explicitly: "what in here rests on something nobody has verified?" — walk the [unverified]/[proposed] claims so the PO approves them knowing what's assumed, not just what's asserted. Nothing is finalized — and nothing downstream (no backlog, no tickets) happens here — until they approve.

Rich review surface (when the host supports artifacts — e.g. Claude Code / claude.ai). Render the definition as a navigable artifact (collapsible sections, a table of contents, easy to scan and drill into) as the review aid — reusing the same doctrine as plan-backlog's review artifact. Load the artifact-design skill before building it. The artifact is a review aid, not the gate: still print a concise summary and ask for approval in the conversation. On hosts without artifacts (Codex / Cursor / Copilot), present the definition as Markdown.

Where it lives (v1). The definition lives in the conversation (and the artifact). If the PO wants it persisted, offer to save it as a Markdown file in the repo (e.g. docs/definitions/<slug>.md) — only on request. No Confluence/whiteboard write-back in v1.

5. Handoff to plan-backlog

On approval, hand the definition to plan-backlog as its input: "the definition is ready — run /plan-backlog on it to turn it into a backlog." Because the problem is now defined, plan-backlog's framing step is lighter — it confirms the framing rather than re-deriving it. That completes the loop define → backlog → ticket → PR.

Readiness — say it plainly. A definition can be approved without being backlog-ready: if core must-haves are still "not established", or the doc leans on [unverified] claims, tell the PO that at handoff rather than passing it downstream as settled. plan-backlog's lighter framing trusts a grounded definition; a thin one should either loop back here to firm up, or be handed on with the gaps flagged so plan-backlog re-derives instead of confirming. Don't let approval alone stand in for readiness.

Persisting for a later session. If the backlog won't be built in the same sitting, the definition needs a carrier — offer to save it to docs/definitions/<slug>.md so plan-backlog can read it as an input file later. Without that, an in-conversation-only definition can't reach a future plan-backlog run.

Guardrails

• Facilitate, never decide: ask, offer alternatives, and let the PO make the call at each step — don't hand them a finished definition and call it done.
• Grounding over fluency (see Grounding & provenance): generating options is the job; asserting unverifiable facts as established is not. Mark every claim's provenance, keep [unverified] market/novelty claims out of the load-bearing prose (or clearly flagged), and prefer a marked gap to an invented answer. A thin spark is drawn out with questions, not filled in for the PO.
• No backlog, no tickets here — that's plan-backlog. This step stops at an approved definition.
• Approval gate before the definition is finalized.
• Watch for secrets/PII in the source material; don't copy them into the definition.