Plans Azure DevOps Product Backlog Items for the agent team - reads PBIs tagged agent-plan (or a given PBI id), has the planner agent break each into tasks, and creates them as child Tasks tagged agent-proposed for the product owner to approve. Use when the user says plan the backlog, plan PBI 123, break down this item, or similar.
Install
npx skillscat add gitquuu/qugents/ado-plan Install via the SkillsCat registry.
Plan backlog items into agent tasks
Load the ado-backlog skill first: it has the project settings, tools, fields, tags and WIQL. This skill runs in the main session (it talks to Azure DevOps); the planning itself is done by the qugents:planner agent.
Input: a PBI id (/qugents:ado-plan 123) or nothing, which means every PBI tagged agent-plan.
Steps per PBI
- Read.
wit_work_item getwith relations: title, description, acceptance criteria, tags, parent Feature/Epic (read its title/description for context), existing child Tasks, andlist_comments(the PO may have answered earlier questions there). - Check readiness. If acceptance criteria are missing or the item is too vague to plan, do not invent them: add a comment with 1–5 concrete questions, add tag
needs-human, and move to the next PBI. - Plan. Spawn
qugents:plannerwith: the PBI title, description and acceptance criteria verbatim; the parent's goal; the PO's comments; the existing child tasks (plan only the gap); and the instruction "Output tasks in your standard format. Each task must be one pull request." - Create tasks. One
wit_work_item_write add_childcall under the PBI with all tasks in order (workItemType: "Task",format: "Markdown"):- Title:
T<n> — <imperative title> - Description (Markdown): Why, Acceptance criteria (Given/When/Then list), Backend, API contract, Frontend, Test cases, Depends on. Keep the planner's content as it is.
Then oneupdate_batchon the new ids:/fields/System.Tags=agent-proposedand/fields/Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.RemainingWork= 2 (S), 4 (M) or 8 (L).add_childcannot set these itself.
- Title:
- Link dependencies. For "Depends on: T", link the new task to T as successor/predecessor.
- Update the PBI. Tags: remove
agent-plan, addagent-planned. Comment:
Agent plan: <n> tasks created (T1–T<n>), tagged agent-proposed.
Next step (PO): review/edit the tasks and change agent-proposed → agent-ready on the ones to build.
Open questions: <planner's open questions, or "none">
Risks: <planner's risks, or "none"> If the planner has open questions that block a task, still create the other tasks, and tag the PBI needs-human as well.
Rules
- Never tag anything
agent-ready. That is the PO's approval. - Never edit the PBI's description, acceptance criteria or state.
- Re-running on a PBI that already has
agent-plannedonly adds tasks for new scope the PO asked for in a comment; it never duplicates existing tasks. - Finish with a short summary to the user: PBIs planned, tasks created (ids + titles), questions raised.