Feature design

Skill choughton/feature-design-prompt-templates/skills/feature-design

Adversarial-pressure feature design pipeline. Trigger when the user has a new feature idea, wants to triage whether something needs design work, asks for help turning an idea into a spec, wants to break a spec into epics and stories, or needs an implementation Principal Engineer prompt. Use whenever the user mentions "design a feature", "feature idea", "triage", "problem statement", "screen contract", "ui contract", "feature spec", "epics", "stories breakdown", or "implementation handoff".From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add choughton/feature-design-prompt-templates --skill feature-design

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

One thing to look at

1 stars1 stars. Stars are a popularity signal and not a quality one, but at this level it is likely that nobody has read this closely except its author, and you would be relying on your own review.

SKILL.md

4.4 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

Feature Design Pipeline

This skill provides a structured pipeline for taking a feature from a raw idea to implementation-ready epics, stories, and a Principal Engineer prompt. It wraps eight prompt templates into slash commands and tracks state across stages in a per-feature session folder.

When to suggest this skill

Trigger this skill when the user:

Has a new feature idea and isn't sure how to scope it
Asks "is this feature already covered by our docs?" or wants triage
Wants to draft a problem statement
Wants a Screen Contract / UI structural contract for a user-facing feature
Wants a feature specification
Wants to break a spec into epics and stories
Wants to set up a Principal Engineer prompt for multi-agent implementation
Mentions any of: feature design, feature idea, triage, problem statement, screen contract, feature spec, epic breakdown, story breakdown, PE setup, principal engineer prompt

Do NOT trigger this skill for:

Simple bug fixes
Pure refactors with no design questions
Tasks that already have settled requirements and just need stories (use /feature-design:start with --entry-point spec-only if needed, but prefer skipping the plugin for these)

How to route the user

There are three entry points depending on session state:

No active session yet

Recommend /feature-design:start <feature-name> -- <raw idea>. Example:

Sounds like a feature design task. Run:
/feature-design:start <feature-name> -- <one-line description of the idea>
That will create a session folder, capture the idea, and run triage. From there /feature-design:next walks the rest of the pipeline.

Active session already exists

Look for .feature-design/CURRENT in the working folder. If it exists, read the slug and .feature-design/<slug>/state.json to find the current stage. Recommend /feature-design:next to advance, or /feature-design:status for a snapshot.

Mid-pipeline ask

If the user asks for a specific stage out of context (e.g., "draft a problem statement", "give me a screen contract"), point them at the corresponding command:

User intent	Command
Triage / coverage check	`/feature-design:triage`
Explore the idea	`/feature-design:explore`
Draft problem statement	`/feature-design:problem`
UI / Screen Contract	`/feature-design:ui-draft`
Verify the design	`/feature-design:verify`
Generate spec	`/feature-design:spec`
Break spec into epics	`/feature-design:epics`
Generate PE prompt	`/feature-design:pe-setup`

Each step command requires an active session (created via /feature-design:start). If the user wants a one-shot of a stage without ceremony, recommend /feature-design:start first — the session folder is lightweight and the staging makes downstream stages work.

Session folder layout

Sessions live in .feature-design/<slug>/ in the user's working folder. The plugin writes:

00-feature-idea.md — raw idea capture
01-triage.md — triage assessment
02-exploration.md — exploration transcript
03-problem-statement.md
04-ui-contract.md (user-facing only)
07-verification.md (slots 05/06 reserved for future crossfire docs)
08-spec.md
09-epics.md
10-pe-prompt.md
state.json — pipeline state

A .feature-design/CURRENT file holds the active session's slug.

What's deferred

Crossfire and decision-synthesis stages (Templates 05, 06, 08, 09, 10, 11 in the original repo) are not in this v1. The pipeline runs single-agent through verification. When crossfire is added later, the numbering gaps in the output filenames give the new stages a place to land without renumbering existing artifacts.