| name | evaluate-story |
| description | Assess Story complexity, identify required domains, and determine delivery tier (MicroDelivery / Core Team / Core Team + Specialists). Activate as the first step of every delivery orchestration cycle. |
| license | MIT |
| compatibility | Works with any filesystem-based AI coding agent |
| metadata | {"author":"gaai-framework","version":"1.0","category":"delivery","track":"delivery","id":"SKILL-DEL-007","updated_at":"2026-02-26T00:00:00.000Z","status":"stable"} |
| inputs | ["contexts/artefacts/stories/** (the Story to evaluate)","agents/specialists.registry.yaml (to check domain triggers)","core/skills/skills-index.yaml (core framework skills)","project/skills/skills-index.yaml (project-specific skills)","contexts/memory/index.md (registry — resolve project context file from `project` category)"] |
| outputs | ["evaluation result (inline — not written to file)"] |
Evaluate Story
Purpose / When to Activate
Activate as the first action of every Delivery Orchestration cycle, before any sub-agent is spawned.
The Orchestrator needs to know:
- What tier applies (MicroDelivery / Core Team / Core Team + Specialists)
- Which domains are involved (for specialist registry matching)
- Whether any pre-flight risk analysis is warranted
Process
1. Read the Story
Read the full Story artefact: acceptance criteria, complexity field, depends_on list, tags.
2. Assess complexity
| Signal | Weight |
|---|
complexity field in backlog item | Primary signal |
| Number of acceptance criteria | Secondary signal |
| Number of files mentioned in criteria | Secondary signal |
| Cross-cutting concerns (API + DB + UI) | Complexity escalator |
| Prior QA failures on similar work (check decisions log) | Complexity escalator |
3. Scan for domain triggers
Read agents/specialists.registry.yaml. Scan the Story's acceptance criteria and title for trigger keywords. Record which specialists would be needed.
4. Verify skill coverage
Read both core/skills/skills-index.yaml and project/skills/skills-index.yaml. For each domain identified in Step 3, verify that at least one skill in either index covers the required capability.
Check:
- Do the identified domains map to existing skills (by
description, tags, or category)?
- Are there specialist-triggered domains with no corresponding skill?
If a required skill is missing:
- Record the gap: which capability is needed, for which domain
- This will be reported in the output as
skill_gaps
If all required skills exist, record skill_gaps: [].
This step does not block evaluation — it reports gaps. The Orchestrator decides whether to proceed or escalate based on gap severity.
5. Determine tier
complexity ≤ 2 AND files_affected ≤ 2 AND criteria_count ≤ 3 AND no specialist triggers
→ Tier 1: MicroDelivery
complexity 3–7 OR criteria_count > 3 OR moderate specialist triggers
→ Tier 2: Core Team
complexity ≥ 8 OR multiple specialist triggers OR cross-cutting at scale
→ Tier 3: Core Team + Specialists
6. Determine pre-flight risk analysis
Risk analysis is warranted when:
- Story touches security, auth, payments, PII
- Schema or API contract changes
- Blast radius is unclear
- Same area has had prior QA failures
Output
Returns (inline, to the Orchestrator's reasoning):
tier: 1 | 2 | 3
specialists_triggered: [list of specialist IDs or empty]
skill_gaps: [list of {domain, missing_capability, severity: critical|non-critical} or empty]
risk_analysis_required: true | false
complexity_assessment: brief note if complexity field is overridden
blocked: true | false (true if any skill_gap has severity: critical)
This output drives the Orchestrator's next action. It is not written to a file — it is the Orchestrator's internal decision.
Quality Checks
- Tier assignment is consistent with complexity signals
- Specialist triggers are matched against registry, not guessed
- Skill gaps are matched against
skills-index.yaml, not guessed
- Over-staffing (Core Team for a typo fix) is as wrong as under-staffing
- A Story with critical skill gaps must not proceed to
compose-team
