| name | prd |
| description | PRD lifecycle, feature planning, 5-phase cycle: discover, design, sprint, review, release, roadmap, acceptance criteria. |
| allowed-tools | Read, Write, Edit, Bash, Glob, Grep, Agent, AskUserQuestion, TodoRead, TodoWrite |
PRD — Product Requirement Document & 5-Phase Feature Lifecycle
This skill manages the full feature lifecycle through 5 phases:
Discover → Design → Sprint → Review → Release
With a living roadmap, state tracking, iteration loops, and session persistence.
The Complete Hierarchy
PROJECT LEVEL (one-time):
/kickstart → idea → research → monetize → feature roadmap → stack → architecture
/bootstrap → scaffold → .claude/ → CLAUDE.md → .prd/ → .context/ → deploy config
FEATURE LEVEL (repeatable):
/new "feature" → creates feature entry → enters Phase 1
PHASE LEVEL (the 5-phase cycle):
/discover → Phase 1: Discovery (11 Elements)
/design → Phase 2: Design (Stitch MCP)
/sprint → Phase 3: Sprint Execution (plan → build → review → QA → UAT → merge)
/review → Phase 4: Review & Retro (+ iteration loop)
/release → Phase 5: Release Management (Dev → Staging → RC → Production)
Architecture
Commands (entry points) Workflows (logic) Agents (specialists)
───────────────────── ───────────────── ──────────────────────
Project Level:
/kickstart ───────────→ kickstart skill ───────────→ (intake → research → monetize → roadmap)
/bootstrap ───────────→ cicd-starter skill ────────→ (scaffold → .claude/ → .prd/)
Feature Level:
/cks:new ─────────────→ new-project + discover ────→ prd-discoverer
/cks:autonomous ──────→ autonomous.md ─────────────→ (all agents, 5 phases)
Phase Level:
/cks:discover ────────→ discover-phase.md ─────────→ prd-discoverer (11 elements)
/cks:design ──────────→ design-phase.md ───────────→ prd-designer (Stitch MCP)
/cks:sprint ──────────→ sprint-phase.md ───────────→ prd-planner + prd-executor + prd-verifier
/cks:review ──────────→ review-phase.md ───────────→ (feedback + retro + iteration decision)
/cks:release ─────────→ release-phase.md ──────────→ (env promotion + quality gates)
Routing:
/cks:next ────────────→ next.md ───────────────────→ (auto-chains via Skill())
/cks:progress ────────→ progress.md ───────────────→ (read-only dashboard)
/cks:status ──────────→ (inline) ──────────────────→ (read-only)
Daily Actions (PRD-aware):
/cks:go ──────────────→ go.md ─────────────────────→ build → commit → push → PR
/cks:go commit|pr|dev|build → sub-actions (all read PRD state, hint next step)
Utility (integrated into lifecycle):
/cks:context ─────────→ context-research/SKILL.md ──→ (auto-runs in discover)
/cks:doctor ──────────→ (inline diagnostics) ───────→ (auto-runs pre-release)
/cks:changelog ───────→ (inline git analysis) ──────→ (auto-runs post-release)
/cks:retro ───────────→ retrospective/SKILL.md ─────→ (auto-runs in review phase)
Deprecated (redirect):
/cks:discuss ─────────→ redirects to /cks:discover
/cks:plan ────────────→ redirects to /cks:sprint
/cks:execute ─────────→ redirects to /cks:sprint
/cks:verify ──────────→ redirects to /cks:sprint
/cks:ship ────────────→ redirects to /cks:release
Hooks (automatic):
SessionStart ─────────→ Show PRD status if .prd/ exists
Stop ─────────────────→ Warn about uncommitted changes
Commands
Phase Commands
| Command | Phase | Description |
|---|
/cks:discover [phase] | Phase 1 | Discovery — 12 Elements (problem, stories, scope, API surface, criteria, constraints, test plan, UAT, DoD, KPIs, cross-project deps, architecture tier) (+ compliance surface scan if regulated signals detected) |
/cks:design [phase] | Phase 2 | Design — UX research, screen generation (Stitch MCP), component specs |
/cks:sprint [phase] | Phase 3 | Sprint — planning [3a], TDD [3b], implement [3c], code review [3d], QA [3e], UAT [3f], merge [3g] |
/cks:review [phase] | Phase 4 | Review — sprint review [4a], retro [4b], backlog refinement [4c], iteration decision [4d] |
/cks:release [phase|all] | Phase 5 | Release — Dev [5a], Staging [5b], RC + E2E [5c], Production [5d], Post-deploy [5e] |
Lifecycle Commands
| Command | Description |
|---|
/cks:new [brief] | Create new feature → enter Phase 1 |
/cks:next | Auto-advance to next step (respects iteration loops) |
/cks:model [set|reset] | View or change model strategy (opus/sonnet/haiku per agent/tier) |
/cks:autonomous [--from N] | Run all 5 phases without stopping |
/cks:progress | Show 5-phase progress dashboard + suggest next action |
/cks:status | Quick project status overview |
Utility Commands
| Command | Description |
|---|
/cks:go [commit|pr|dev|build] | Daily quick actions (PRD-aware) |
/cks:context [topic] | Research technology → .context/ (auto-runs in discover) |
/cks:doctor | Health diagnostic (auto-runs pre-release) |
/cks:changelog | Generate CHANGELOG.md (auto-runs post-release) |
/cks:retro [--auto] | Retrospective (auto-runs in review phase) |
/cks:research [topic] | Deep multi-hop research → .research/ |
/cks:logs [flags] | View and query lifecycle logs — filter by feature, phase, severity, date |
Agent Team
| Agent | File | Role |
|---|
| prd-orchestrator | agents/prd-orchestrator.md | Drives full lifecycle — dispatches all other agents |
| prd-discoverer | agents/prd-discoverer.md | Phase 1: Discovery — 11 elements, codebase research, manifest-aware |
| prd-designer | agents/prd-designer.md | Phase 2: Design — Stitch MCP screens, component specs |
| prd-planner | agents/prd-planner.md | Phase 3 [3a-3b]: Sprint planning + technical design |
| prd-executor | agents/prd-executor.md | Phase 3 [3c]: Implementation |
| prd-verifier | agents/prd-verifier.md | Phase 3 [3e]: QA validation |
| prd-researcher | agents/prd-researcher.md | Utility: codebase + technology investigation |
The Iteration Loop
Phase 4 (Review) contains the iteration decision [4d] that routes back to the correct phase:
Phase 4: Review
[4d] Iteration Decision
├── "UX issues" → back to Phase 2 (Design)
├── "Logic bugs" → back to Phase 3 (Sprint)
├── "Requirements changed" → back to Phase 1 (Discovery)
└── "Ready to release" → forward to Phase 5 (Release)
/cks:next respects this routing — it reads phase_status from STATE.md:
iterating_design → invokes /cks:designiterating_sprint → invokes /cks:sprintiterating_discover → invokes /cks:discoverreviewed → invokes /cks:release
AskUserQuestion Rule
CRITICAL: All user interactions across ALL phases MUST use AskUserQuestion with selectable options. No plain text terminal questions. This applies to:
- Discovery Q&A (all 11 elements)
- Design decisions (screen approval, variants, sign-off)
- Sprint scope confirmation
- QA failure routing
- UAT approval
- Review feedback
- Iteration decisions
- Release quality gates
Progress Tracker
Every phase displays a progress banner with sub-steps:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PRD ► Phase {NN}: {name} ► {PHASE_NAME}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[1] Discover {✅ done | ▶ current | ○ pending}
[2] Design {✅ done | ▶ current | ○ pending}
[3] Sprint {✅ done | ▶ current | ○ pending}
[4] Review {✅ done | ▶ current | ○ pending}
[5] Release {✅ done | ▶ current | ○ pending}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Derive status from filesystem artifacts:
- Discover done:
{NN}-CONTEXT.md exists
- Design done:
{NN}-DESIGN.md exists
- Sprint done:
{NN}-SUMMARY.md + {NN}-VERIFICATION.md exist
- Review done:
{NN}-REVIEW.md exists
- Release done:
phase_status == "released" in STATE.md
Context Reset Between Phases
Each phase ends with:
━━━ Context Reset ━━━
Phase artifacts saved. Clear context and continue:
/clear
/cks:next
State is on disk — nothing is lost.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
All state lives in .prd/ — nothing is lost on /clear.
State Machine
not_started → discovering → discovered → designing → designed →
sprinting → sprinted → reviewing → reviewed → releasing → released
↑ ↑ ↑
└────────────┴───────────┘
iteration loop (from Phase 4)
iterating_design → designing (back to Phase 2)
iterating_sprint → sprinting (back to Phase 3)
iterating_discover → discovering (back to Phase 1)
File System
See references/filesystem.md for the full directory layout.
Key paths: .prd/PRD-STATE.md (state), .prd/phases/{NN}-{slug}/ (artifacts), .prd/logs/lifecycle.jsonl (events).
Customization
This skill ships with opinionated defaults. Review and adapt to your needs:
- Phase workflow: Step-by-step instructions for each phase — edit files in
workflows/
- Gate criteria: What must be true before advancing phases — edit workflow step files
- Iteration limits: Max iterations before escalating (default 3) — edit SKILL.md
- Agent prompts: How agents are instructed — edit agent files in
../agents/
- Templates: Output document formats — edit files in
templates/
- No tool restrictions: This skill orchestrates everything and needs full tool access.
Common Rationalizations
| Rationalization | Reality |
|---|
| "This feature is too simple for a PRD" | Simple features in unknown systems create cascading bugs. The PRD takes 10 minutes; the rework takes hours. |
| "We already know what to build" | Knowing the what without documenting the why leads to scope creep and misaligned expectations. |
| "Discovery slows us down" | Skipping discovery means discovering requirements during implementation — the most expensive time to learn. |
| "The user will tell us if it's wrong" | Users report symptoms, not root causes. Discovery prevents building the wrong thing entirely. |
Rules
- AskUserQuestion for ALL interactions — no plain text questions, ever
- No interruptions in autonomous mode — Discoverer/Designer use autonomous mode
- Commit after each sprint phase — Atomic history, recoverable
- Max 1 iteration in autonomous — Prevents infinite loops
- State after every step — STATE.md updated constantly
- Filesystem is truth — re-scan artifacts, don't trust stale state
- Agents stay in their lane — Discoverer discovers, Designer designs, Executor codes
- Design before code — Phase 2 must complete before Phase 3 starts
- Quality gates in release — not skipped even in autonomous mode
- Compliance surface check — if Phase 1 CONTEXT.md contains PII, payment, health data, or B2B enterprise signals, dispatch compliance-advisor BEFORE declaring Phase 1 done
