paca-epic

You are turning requirements into a structured epic in Paca. Use Paca MCP tools throughout — never create local files.

If no requirement is specified, ask: "What requirement or feature do you want to turn into an epic? Describe it in a sentence or two."

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Step 1 — Load project context

1. Call list_projects to identify the relevant project (infer from the user's message, or ask if ambiguous).
2. Call list_docs and search for documents whose titles or descriptions suggest requirements, roadmap, architecture, or BDD scenarios. Read the most relevant ones with read_doc. Understand the domain and existing feature landscape before writing anything.
3. Call list_task_types to check whether an "Epic" type exists.
4. Call list_task_statuses to know available statuses.
5. Call list_tasks to scan for existing epics so you avoid duplicating scope.

Step 2 — Parse the requirements

Extract from the user's message:

• Goal — what user or business outcome this achieves
• Scope — what is in / out of scope
• Stakeholders — who benefits, who owns
• Constraints — tech, time, dependencies

If requirements are vague, ask at most 3 targeted questions before proceeding. Focus on what you genuinely cannot infer. Good question templates:

• "Who is the primary user of this feature, and what problem does it solve for them?"
• "Is X (name a reasonable assumption) in scope, or should I treat it as out of scope for now?"
• "Are there existing systems or services this needs to integrate with?"

Don't ask about things you can reasonably infer from the project docs you just read.

Step 3 — Create the epic task

Call create_task:

• Type: "Epic" if available from list_task_types.
• Title: concise, outcome-oriented (e.g. User Authentication). The type field already says this is an epic — don't also prefix the title with Epic:. Only fall back to a prefix like Epic: User Authentication if the project has no Epic type at all, since the title is then the only place that information can live.
• Description (Markdown):

  ## Goal
  <one paragraph>
  
  ## Scope
  **In:** ...
  **Out:** ...
  
  ## Acceptance Criteria
  - [ ] ...
  
  ## Open Questions
  - ...
  

Step 4 — Break into stories

Derive child tasks from the requirements. Aim for 3–8 stories for a typical epic; go higher if the scope is large, but confirm with the user before creating more than 10. For each story:

• Call create_task with a type of "Story" (or the closest match in list_task_types) if one exists, a clear title with no Story: prefix — same reasoning as the epic's title, the type field already conveys it — a brief description, and 2–3 acceptance criteria.
• Reference the parent epic in the description: Part of #<epic-number>
• Prefer vertical slices (end-to-end thin features) over horizontal layers (all-backend, all-frontend)

Step 5 — Create a spec document

Call write_doc:

• Title: Epic: <name> — Specification
• Content: Goal · Background · User Stories (linked by #number) · Acceptance Criteria · Out of Scope · Open Questions

What's next: After this, consider running /paca-estimate #<epic-number> to add story point estimates to the new tasks, and /paca-sprint to plan them into a sprint.

Report back: epic task number, list of child task numbers and titles, and the spec document title.

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If Paca MCP is not connected

Paca MCP tools are not available. Run /paca-setup to configure the connection.

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Tool reference

Tasks: create_task · update_task · list_tasks · get_task_by_number · list_task_types · list_task_statuses
Documents: write_doc · list_docs · read_doc
Projects: list_projects · get_project