Decomposes a PRD, issue, or spec into a copy-pasteable single `/goal until ..., or stop after N turns` line. Use when running /goal against a spec, to reduce acceptance criteria to AND-joined boolean assertions.
Decomposes a PRD, issue, or spec into a copy-pasteable single `/goal until ..., or stop after N turns` line. Use when running /goal against a spec, to reduce acceptance criteria to AND-joined boolean assertions.
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/ork:prd-to-goal — PRD → /goal Decomposition
Converts a PRD / issue / spec into a single copy-pasteable /goal line. The hard part of /goal is not running it — it is writing an until clause that is convergent (terminates), falsifiable (testable boolean), and observable (the agent can actually check it without subjective judgement). This skill makes that decomposition reproducible.
1. When to use
Use it when:
You have a written PRD, GitHub issue, or spec and want to run /goal against it.
Past /goal runs drifted, looped, or burned tokens because the until clause was vague (until tests pass, until done, until design is good).
You need to justify the abort budget — turns, tokens, no-progress threshold.
Skip it when:
One-shot bug fix where the failing test is the acceptance criterion. Just run /goal until pnpm test -- auth.spec.ts passes.
No written PRD exists. Run /ork:write-prd first — vibes do not decompose.
The work is destructive or irreversible (DB migrations, mass file deletes). /goal retries; you do not want retries on DROP TABLE.
2. Inputs the skill accepts
Input
How
Pasted PRD text
Provide as the argument, or paste into the chat after invoking.
Path to a Markdown / text file; the skill Reads it.
ADR / design doc
Same as spec file.
3. The decomposition algorithm
Extract acceptance criteria. Pull every MUST, SHOULD, Definition of Done, Acceptance Criteria, and checkbox-style line. If the doc has none, stop and tell the user to run /ork:write-prd first — there is nothing to converge on.
Map each criterion to an observable boolean. Each criterion must reduce to a single shell-checkable assertion. Examples of observable state:
test -f path/to/file (file exists)
pnpm test -- pattern passes (test command exits 0)
Reject non-observable criteria. Drop or rewrite criteria that depend on subjective judgement (code is clean, design feels right, users are happy). Either find a proxy (lint exits 0, Lighthouse score > 90, NPS survey ID exists) or surface the criterion back to the user as out of scope for /goal.
Compose the until clause. AND-join the observable assertions in priority order — the cheapest, most likely-to-fail check first so the loop short-circuits early. Three to five assertions is the sweet spot; more than seven usually means the PRD is two PRDs.
Fold the budget INTO the same condition. Claude Code accepts one goal per
session, replace-on-set, and the bound is written inside that single condition
(…, or stop after 15 turns). It is not a second command. Sensible turn caps:
15 for a single feature, 30 for a refactor, 5 for a bug fix.
Never emit a second /goal line. A second line does not add a rail — it
parses as a fresh condition, REPLACES the first, and leaves the session
goaled on the budget alone with every acceptance assertion discarded. The
abort-if form this skill used to emit was never Claude Code syntax at all:
grep -c -a -F 'abort-if' against the 2.1.226 binary returns 0, and it
appears in none of the 357 archived changelogs. Verified 2026-08-08 (#3312).
4. Output template
The skill emits exactly ONE line, ready to paste:
/goal until <assertion_1> AND <assertion_2> AND <assertion_3>, or stop after <N> turns
No commentary, no markdown wrapper — the user copies the line straight into Claude Code.
Optional: rubric emission (.claude/rubric.json)
When the user wants graded feedback beyond pass/fail booleans, the skill MAY also emit .claude/rubric.json conforming to ork-rubric/1.0 (schema: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/shared/rubric.schema.json), mapping each acceptance criterion to one dimension:
Scores are 0–10 (min_pass = soft floor, min_blocker = hard blocker regardless of composite); dimension weights MUST sum to 1.0 — see the schema for the full contract.
The file is deliberately user-editable before the /goal run — that is the point. Adjusting weights and min_pass thresholds is how the user injects judgement into the loop without rewriting assertions (rubric-as-environment-feedback, Lance Martin 2026-06-09). The post-timeout grader (§8) treats the rubric, if present, as the user's intent — senior to the literal assertion text.
5. Worked examples
Example A — Bug fix PRD
Input (issue body):
Title: Login fails on emails containing "+"
Acceptance Criteria:
- New regression test in tests/auth/test_login.py covers email with "+"
- The new test passes
- All existing auth tests still pass
Output:
/goal until test -f tests/auth/test_login.py AND pnpm test -- tests/auth/test_login.py passes AND pnpm test -- tests/auth passes, or stop after 5 turns
Rationale: file existence is the cheapest check; the targeted test is the regression gate; the broad auth suite catches collateral damage.
Example B — Feature PRD
Input (PRD excerpt):
Feature: User Avatar Endpoint
MUST:
- New route GET /users/:id/avatar registered
- Returns 200 with { url: string, updatedAt: ISO8601 } for known user
- Returns 404 for unknown user
- Integration test covers both cases
- OpenAPI spec updated
Output:
/goal until grep -q "users/:id/avatar" src/routes/users.ts AND pnpm test -- tests/integration/users.avatar.spec.ts passes AND grep -q "/users/{id}/avatar" openapi.yaml AND pnpm lint passes, or stop after 15 turns
Rationale: route grep catches a handler that was stubbed but never wired; the integration spec encodes both 200 and 404; OpenAPI grep enforces the docs MUST; lint guards against half-typed code shipping.
Example C — Refactor PRD
Input (PRD excerpt):
Refactor: split monolithic src/auth.ts (1842 LOC) into per-strategy files
Definition of Done:
- src/auth.ts under 200 LOC
- New files in src/auth/strategies/*.ts cover oauth, jwt, password
- All auth tests still pass
- Lint clean
- No new files outside src/auth/
Output:
/goal until [ $(wc -l < src/auth.ts) -lt 200 ] AND test -f src/auth/strategies/oauth.ts AND test -f src/auth/strategies/jwt.ts AND test -f src/auth/strategies/password.ts AND pnpm test -- tests/auth passes AND pnpm lint passes, or stop after 30 turns
Rationale: the LOC bound is the convergent signal — without it, /goal can keep "improving" forever. File-existence checks pin the structural decomposition; tests + lint guard correctness. Higher budget because refactors run longer than bug fixes.
6. Recipe Library — pre-built loops
Where §3–5 generate a custom /goal line from a spec, the recipe library ships ready-made ones for the recurring autonomous loops. Each is a loop shape wrapped around an ork worker skill, following the same convergent / falsifiable / budgeted rules as a generated line.
Recipe
Use when
Worker
🧪 Coverage climb
raise coverage to a target, meaningfully
/ork:cover
🔴 Production error sweep
clear a backlog of actionable errors
/ork:fix-issue
📚 Docs-drift sweep
docs / reference drifted from code
/ork:audit-full
⚡ Page-load budget
a page exceeds its latency budget
/ork:performance
🧹 Repository cleanup
stale memory / state accumulated
/ork:dream
✅ Quality streak
don't trust a single green (flaky suite)
/ork:verify
🎫 Ticket → PR-ready
drive an issue to a CI-green PR
/ork:fix-issue → /ork:create-pr
🧼 Type/lint zero
clear a type/lint backlog without suppressions
fixer agent
Full recipes — the exact single-line /goal until …, or stop after N turns lines, convergent signal, and per-recipe guardrail: references/recipe-library.md. That file is the in-repo source intended for an ork-loops pack on skills.sh (not yet built; the channel Forward Future's Loop Library uses), so the loop recipes can travel while ork supplies the machinery each pass runs on.
7. Anti-patterns
Bad
Why it fails
Good
/goal until tests pass
Which tests? Existing or new? On which command? The agent can pick whatever subset is already green and claim done.
/goal until pnpm test -- tests/auth/test_login.py passes AND pnpm test -- tests/auth passes
/goal until the code looks clean
Not falsifiable. The agent cannot check "looks clean" — it will either declare victory immediately or never.
/goal until pnpm lint passes AND [ $(wc -l < src/auth.ts) -lt 200 ]
/goal until done
Unbounded. There is no terminating condition; combined with a generous , or stop after 50 turns this is how runs eat 500K tokens overnight.
Pick 3–5 observable assertions. If you cannot, the PRD is not ready — go to /ork:write-prd.
8. Post-timeout assertion grader
If the /goal loop hits its turn bound, do NOT retry the same line and do NOT let the looping agent critique its own assertions. Spawn a FRESH-context grader that audits the assertion set itself:
# Bare-eval pattern — independent context window, zero shared state:
Bash("CLAUDE_CODE_FORK_SUBAGENT=1 claude -p --bare \"$(cat /tmp/grader-prompt.txt)\"")
# or: Agent(subagent_type="general-purpose", prompt=grader_prompt) # fresh spawn, no producer prose
The grader receives the /goal line, .claude/rubric.json (if emitted), a compressed summary of the last N turns, and freshly regenerated repo-state evidence. It returns one verdict:
Verdict
Diagnosis
Action
tighten
Assertions too weak — agent could satisfy them without real success
Re-run with the stricter revised line
loosen
Assertions unsatisfiable as written (wrong path, impossible bound, pre-broken suite)
Grading must happen in an independent context window — never self-critique (verifier sub-agents outperform self-critique because the grader does not share the producer's context; Lance Martin, 2026-06-09). Budget: one grader call per timeout, and the grader never loops itself.
Full pattern (prompt template, independence rules, worked example): ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/chain-patterns/references/assertion-grader.md.
9. Related skills
ork:write-prd — if the input has no acceptance criteria, run this first.
ork:brainstorm — useful when the PRD itself is contested and you want options before writing the goal.
ork:audit-full — after /goal exits, run audit-full to confirm the assertions actually held end-to-end (the loop trusts the boolean; audit re-checks the intent).
