aSPARK

Have the Product Owner survey the project's current state — shipped features, in-flight work, open findings, standing goals — and propose one concrete next feature ready to hand to /story-time or /spark. Use when the user has no idea in hand and asks "what should we build next", when a loop just closed and the next cycle needs a starting point, or when the backlog feels stale and needs a grounded suggestion instead of a guess.

Run the full SPARK loop end-to-end for one feature: Specify → Plan → Act → Review → Keep, pausing at every gate for the user's decision. Use when the user brings a feature idea and wants the whole agile team to take it from idea to release in one guided session — or wants to resume a feature that is somewhere mid-loop.

Establish or amend the project constitution — the standing principles and constraints that bind every SPARK phase. Use once at project start to give the team its ground rules, or any time a project-wide decision (stack choice, quality bar, non-negotiable) changes and should apply to all future features.

Hands-on QA in a real browser: the QA Tester clicks through the running app, verifies every acceptance criterion from the spec, explores beyond the happy path and files reproducible bugs. Use after /peer-review passes, or to re-test after fixes. Requires a running app and browser tooling.

Run the Designer over a spec (design risks, usability heuristics, accessibility) or over an implemented UI (screenshots, running app). Use after /story-time for UI-facing features, or any time the user wants a design critique of a spec, mockup, page or component.

Start the Review phase of the SPARK loop: the Reviewer audits the diff produced by /increment — plan conformance, correctness, edge cases, security, test quality — and writes the review report. Use after /increment reports done, or to re-review after fixes.

Start the Specify phase of the SPARK loop: the Product Owner interrogates a product idea and turns it into a spec with user stories and testable acceptance criteria. Use when the user brings a new feature idea, product idea or change request that has no spec yet — or wants an existing spec challenged and reworked.

Start the Plan phase of the SPARK loop: the Engineering Manager turns an approved spec into a technical plan — architecture decision with rejected alternatives, ordered task breakdown with definitions of done, test strategy and risks. Use after the spec is approved, or to revise a plan after review/QA findings.

Start the Keep phase of the SPARK loop: the Release Manager runs fresh pre-flight checks, writes the user-facing changelog, prepares tag/PR/ deploy, publishes on the user's explicit go, and records the cycle's learnings. Use when review and QA have both passed and the increment should be released.

Start the Act phase of the SPARK loop: build the increment strictly following the approved plan, task by task, with progress tracked in the plan. Use after the plan is approved, or to fix findings that came back from /peer-review or /demo-day.