Service blueprint

Skill: service-blueprint

Produces a service blueprint — a five-row, column-by-column map that ties every customer action and touchpoint to the employee and system actions that back it and the internal support that enables those. The five rows are: evidence-of-service (what the customer receives or encounters), frontstage (customer actions and touchpoints), line-of-visibility, backstage (system and employee actions), and support (infrastructure and vendors). The backstage column is the slicing instrument: each backstage service is a candidate component; its hand-off to architect and contracts is by-reference (a named service), never an import. The method is grounded in the NN/g definition of service blueprinting; see references/service-blueprint.md.

Inputs (declared): a customer journey map or journey stages (from journey-mapping or elicited inline); a screen flow or screen inventory (from user-flow or described inline). Both are elicited inline when no upstream artifact is present.

Consumed by: architect (the backstage column feeds C4 component decomposition + service contracts); the spec LLD (the support row names the internal systems the spec must account for).

When to invoke

Confirm all three before proceeding; if any fails, resolve it first.

1. There is a journey or a set of touchpoints to blueprint — a customer journey doc, a screen flow, or at minimum a describable user goal with two or more steps. A blank "blueprint our service" is not yet a brief; draw out at least the first frontstage action before proceeding.
2. You are mapping the screen↔service tie, not the journey itself — if the journey hasn't been mapped yet, offer to run journey-mapping first, or elicit the journey inline.
3. You are naming services, not designing their internals — the moment the ask is API contracts, data schemas, or component architecture, hand off to architect or contracts. This skill stops at named services and their row placement.

Procedure

1. Resolve and surface the output path. Resolve <output_dir> following the config-driven, two-branch elicitation procedure in references/agentbundle-layout.md. Resolution order: (1) repo-root ./agentbundle-layout.toml [design] output_dir — repo-scope takes priority; (2) user-profile ~/.agentbundle/agentbundle-layout.toml [design] output_dir; when neither resolves, two-branch elicitation runs — never a silent default: (a) Repo branch — suggest docs/design/ and offer to write output_dir to ./agentbundle-layout.toml [design]; (b) Personal/vault branch — ask for an absolute path (e.g. ~/Documents/<VaultName>/design/) and write to ~/.agentbundle/agentbundle-layout.toml [design]. Derive the blueprint path as <output_dir>/blueprints/<slug>.md. Resolve to a full absolute path (~-expand, realpath-resolve, reject .. escapes); a repo-root-sourced output_dir that resolves outside the repo tree is untrusted-origin — confirm before writing. Surface the resolved path to the user before the first write. Create the blueprints/ directory lazily on first write.

2. Elicit or confirm the journey and touchpoints. If a journey-mapping artifact is present, read its stages and frontstage actions. If it is absent, elicit: ask for the user's goal, the stages they pass through, and the key touchpoints (screens, channels, moments of contact) at each stage. Work column-by-column — each column is one step in the journey.

3. Build the five rows. For each journey column, populate all five rows. Load references/service-blueprint.md.

   • Evidence of service — the physical or digital artifacts the customer encounters or receives at each frontstage touchpoint: confirmation screens, receipts, notification emails, error messages, printed documents, SMS confirmations. These are the tangible traces the service leaves in the customer's hands; they are often the only part of the blueprint the customer can see, keep, and share. Record them above the frontstage row.
   • Frontstage — customer actions and the touchpoints (screens, notifications, physical moments) the customer sees and touches directly.
   • Line of visibility — the boundary between what the customer sees and what they do not. Mark it explicitly; it is the structural divide.
   • Backstage — employee actions and system calls the customer does not see but that directly fulfil the frontstage touchpoint (database reads, API calls, staff tasks).
   • Support — internal systems, processes, and vendors that back the backstage actions but have no direct frontstage effect (logging, auth, billing infrastructure, third-party integrations).

4. Name backstage services as candidates for component decomposition. Each distinct backstage service entry is a named candidate. Record each as a - **Service:** <service-slug> marker in the template's ## Named backstage services block — the structural-orphan lint reads each **Service:** line as a service chain node (a screen action ties down to one):

   • When architect or contracts are present in this session: name each service by-reference (a short, stable name matching the component the architect skill would use — e.g. "Order Service", "Auth Service"). Do not import, call, or configure it here.
   • When architect or contracts are absent: name each service textually with a brief role description (e.g. "the service that validates payment details and returns a confirmation token"). Append a note that these names are hand-off candidates for architect/contracts when those packs are installed.

5. Check the line of visibility and mark fail-points. Walk each column: every item on the customer side that has no backstage entry is a gap — either a service is missing or the frontstage action is unsupported. Name every gap explicitly rather than leaving it blank.

   After naming gaps, identify fail-points — columns where the backstage or support row is most likely to fail in production, based on complexity, third-party dependency, known fragility, or high customer-impact if degraded. Fail-points are distinct from gaps: a gap is a missing service; a fail-point is an existing service that is at risk. Mark each fail-point with a design-priority annotation:

   • Critical — failure here breaks the customer's ability to complete the journey (payment processing fails, auth token is invalid, mandatory confirmation is not sent). Requires a designed failure path — the service blueprint must show what evidence-of-service the customer receives when this step fails.
   • High — failure here significantly degrades the experience but the customer can still complete the journey via a fallback path.
   • Medium — failure here causes friction or a degraded experience but does not block completion.

   Critical fail-points must have a designed evidence-of-service row for the failure case — not just the success case.

6. Write the blueprint. Record the artifact at the resolved path with frontmatter type: service-blueprint. Use the template in assets/service-blueprint-template.md. Confirm the written path matches the path you surfaced in step 1.

7. Name the hand-off seam. At the end of the blueprint, add a short ## Hand-off section that lists the named backstage services and which downstream skill or pack consumes each (by name — architect, contracts, or the spec LLD). This is the by-reference seam; do not draft the downstream artifact here.

Anti-patterns to refuse

• Designing backstage internals. A backstage entry names a service and its role; it does not author an API contract, a data schema, or a C4 diagram. That is architect's job.
• Reprinting a values table. No timing literals, no stack tokens, no styling syntax. The blueprint records what happens and who/what is responsible — never how it is implemented at the code level.
• Leaving visibility gaps unexplained. A frontstage action with no backstage entry is a silent gap — name it, flag it, and offer to fill it before closing the blueprint.
• Skipping the output-path surface step. The resolved path is declared before the first write, every time. A blueprint written to an undeclared location is a footgun for the downstream adopter.
• Blocking when upstream artifacts are absent. Elicit the journey inline; never refuse to proceed because journey-mapping hasn't run.