| name | lisa-notion-to-tracker |
| description | Break down a Notion PRD into Epics, Stories, and Sub-tasks in the configured destination tracker (JIRA, GitHub Issues, or Linear per .lisa.config.json). Use this skill whenever the user shares a Notion PRD URL and wants it converted into tracker tickets, or asks to "break down a PRD", "create tickets from a PRD", "turn this PRD into tickets", or similar. Also trigger when the user mentions creating epics/stories/tasks from a Notion document. This skill handles the full pipeline: fetching the PRD, analyzing comments, researching the codebase, identifying blockers, and creating all tickets with empirical verification plans.
|
Notion PRD to Tracker Breakdown
Convert a Notion PRD into a structured ticket hierarchy in the configured destination tracker (JIRA, GitHub Issues, or Linear per .lisa.config.json): Epics > Stories > Sub-tasks.
Each sub-task is scoped to exactly one repo and includes an empirical verification plan.
Notion access policy: all Notion operations in this skill go through lisa-notion-access. Do not call Notion REST APIs (api.notion.com/...), Notion MCP tools (mcp__*notion*), or the @notionhq/client library directly. Invoke lisa-notion-access via the Skill tool with an operation name and arguments per its dispatch table.
Modes
This skill supports two modes, controlled by a dry_run flag in $ARGUMENTS:
dry_run: false (default — full mode): run all phases, write tickets via lisa-tracker-write, run the preservation gate, report.dry_run: true (planning + validation only — no writes): run Phases 1, 1.5, 1.6, 2, 3, 4 to plan the hierarchy and draft each ticket spec, then call lisa-tracker-validate (with --spec-only) on every drafted ticket. Aggregate the per-ticket validator reports into a single dry-run report. Skip Phase 5 (sub-task creation), Phase 5.5 (preservation gate), and Phase 6 (results report) — none of those make sense without writes. Return the dry-run report so the caller (e.g. lisa-notion-prd-intake) can decide whether to proceed.
Dry-run output format:
## notion-to-tracker dry-run: <PRD title>
### Planned hierarchy
- Epic: <summary>
prd_section: "<heading text from the PRD that produced this epic>"
prd_anchor: "<first ~10 chars>...<last ~10 chars>" # for selection_with_ellipsis; null if no specific section
- Story 1.1: <summary>
prd_section: "<heading or user-story line>"
prd_anchor: "<start>...<end>"
- Sub-task [<repo>]: <summary>
prd_section: "<heading or AC bullet>"
prd_anchor: "<start>...<end>"
- ...
- Story 1.2: ...
### Per-ticket validation
- <ticket-id>: PASS | FAIL — <count> failures
prd_section: "<heading text>"
prd_anchor: "<start>...<end>" # mirrored from Planned hierarchy for caller convenience
failures:
- gate: <gate-id>
category: <category from validator>
product_relevant: <true|false>
what: <plain-language description from validator>
recommendation: <1–3 candidate resolutions from validator>
### Verdict: PASS | FAIL
### Total failures: <n>
prd_anchor and prd_section exist so downstream callers (notably lisa-notion-prd-intake) can post block-anchored Notion comments via lisa-notion-access operation create-comment. Build them as you parse the PRD: when you assign a planned ticket to a heading, user-story line, or AC bullet, capture the first ~10 and last ~10 characters of that section's text and emit them in the report. If a planned ticket genuinely doesn't trace to a specific section (cross-cutting infrastructure, derived sub-tasks), set both fields to null — the caller will fall back to a page-level comment.
The failures array passes the validator's Failure details block through verbatim. Do not re-format what or recommendation here — those fields are already product-readable per the validator's contract, and re-summarizing risks losing concrete recommendations.
The dry-run mode never writes to JIRA and never calls mcp__atlassian__createJiraIssue. It also never sets a Notion status — that is the orchestrating skill's responsibility.
Hard Rule: All Writes Go Through lisa-tracker-write
Every JIRA ticket created by this skill — every epic, story, and sub-task — MUST be created by invoking the lisa-tracker-write skill. Never call mcp__atlassian__createJiraIssue, mcp__atlassian__editJiraIssue, mcp__atlassian__createIssueLink, or any other Atlassian write tool directly from this skill or from any sub-agent it spawns.
lisa-tracker-write enforces gates this skill does not:
- 3-audience description (Context / Technical Approach / Acceptance Criteria)
- Gherkin acceptance criteria
- Epic parent validation
- Explicit issue-link discovery (
blocks / is blocked by / relates to / duplicates / clones)
- Single-repo scope check on Bug / Task / Sub-task / Improvement
- Sign-in account and target environment recorded in description
- Post-create verification
Bypassing lisa-tracker-write produces thin tickets that the rest of the lifecycle (triage, ticket-verify, journey, evidence) treats as broken. This is the most common failure mode this skill has had — calling createJiraIssue directly is a regression, not an optimization. The Atlassian read tools (getJiraIssue, searchJiraIssuesUsingJql, getJiraIssueRemoteIssueLinks, getAccessibleAtlassianResources, getJiraProjectIssueTypesMetadata, getVisibleJiraProjects) ARE allowed for context gathering and the Phase 5.5 preservation gate.
Input
A Notion PRD URL. The PRD is expected to have:
- A main page with context, problems, and links to Epic sub-pages
- Epic sub-pages with User Stories and functional/non-functional requirements
- Comments/discussions on each page with engineering notes and product decisions
Configuration
This skill reads project configuration from .lisa.config.json (with .lisa.config.local.json overriding per key) and operational E2E test config from environment variables. See the config-resolution rule for the full schema.
From .lisa.config.json
This skill is a PRD source (Notion); destination tracker resolution is handled by lisa-tracker-write and lisa-tracker-validate internally — this skill does NOT read tracker directly. The relevant config for the source side:
| Field | Purpose | Required when |
|---|
notion.prdDatabaseId | Notion database hosting PRDs | invoked without an explicit Notion page URL (batch / arg-less mode) |
From environment variables (E2E test config — operational, not tracker)
| Variable | Purpose | Example |
|---|
E2E_TEST_PHONE | Test user phone number for verification plans | 0000000099 |
E2E_TEST_OTP | Test user OTP code | 555555 |
E2E_TEST_ORG | Test organization name | Arsenal |
E2E_BASE_URL | Frontend base URL for Playwright tests | https://dev.example.io/ |
E2E_GRAPHQL_URL | GraphQL API URL for curl verification | https://gql.dev.example.io/graphql |
If env vars are not available, ask the user to provide them explicitly before proceeding. Do not retrieve credentials from repository files or local agent settings.
Workflow
Phase 1: Fetch & Analyze the PRD
- Fetch the main PRD page by invoking
lisa-notion-access via the Skill tool with operation read-page and id: <PRD-page-id>. The returned payload includes the page's properties and content blocks.
- Identify all Epic sub-pages from the content (look for child page references in the returned block tree).
- Fetch all Epic pages in parallel — for each child page ID, invoke
lisa-notion-access operation read-page.
- Fetch full comments from every page by invoking
lisa-notion-access operation list-comments with block_id: <page-id> (page comments and block-anchored comments alike). If list-comments is not in the access skill's dispatch table yet, surface that to the caller — comments are required for engineering-decision synthesis below.
- Synthesize decisions and blockers from the PRD content + all comments:
- Decisions already confirmed by the team (look for agreement in comment threads)
- Open questions that need product/engineering input
- Engineering comments (prefixed with "Engineering:" or wrench emoji) that identify technical constraints
- Cross-PRD dependencies (references to other features or shared infrastructure)
Phase 1.5: Extract Source Artifacts
PRDs typically reference external design, UX, and data artifacts (Figma files, Lovable prototypes, Loom walkthroughs, screenshots, example payloads, Confluence pages). These MUST be preserved onto the resulting tickets — otherwise developers picking up a ticket lose the source of truth. This is the failure mode this step exists to prevent.
-
Scan the PRD main page, all Epic sub-pages, and every fetched comment thread for:
- URLs to design/prototype tools (Figma, FigJam, Figma Make, Lovable, Framer, Penpot)
- URLs to recording/walkthrough tools (Loom, YouTube, Vimeo, Descript)
- URLs to collaborative docs (Google Docs/Slides/Sheets, Confluence, Notion peer pages)
- URLs to code sandboxes (CodeSandbox, StackBlitz, Replit, GitHub permalinks/gists)
- URLs to diagramming tools (Miro, Mural, Excalidraw, Mermaid Live, draw.io, Lucid)
- URLs to data/observability tools (Grafana, Datadog, Sentry, Metabase, Looker)
- Embedded images and file attachments on the page itself
- Fenced code blocks with example data (JSON, SQL, GraphQL, cURL request/response)
-
Classify each artifact and apply taxonomy rules by invoking the lisa-tracker-source-artifacts skill. That skill is the single source of truth for: domains (ui-design / ux-flow / data / ops / reference), per-tool classification rules (Figma /proto/ vs design, Lovable as ux-flow, Loom, screenshots), and coverage smells. Do not restate the rules here — invoke the skill so any drift in the rules propagates uniformly.
-
Build an artifacts map keyed by domain. Each entry: { url, title, domain, source_page, source_page_url, classification_reason }. The classification_reason makes disambiguation auditable ("Figma URL contains /proto/ → ux-flow"). The source_page lets you trace each reference back to where it appeared in the PRD.
-
Surface coverage smells as defined in lisa-tracker-source-artifacts §5 (zero artifacts, prototype-without-mock, mock-without-prototype, Lovable-without-business-rules). Record any detected smells on the epic.
Phase 1.6: Source Precedence & Conflict Resolution
Source precedence rules and cross-axis conflict handling are defined in lisa-tracker-source-artifacts §3 and §4. Apply them during ticket synthesis: every conflict between artifacts must be recorded under ## Open Questions on the affected ticket, never silently reconciled.
The existing-component reuse expectation (mocks define visual intent, not implementation shortcut) is defined in lisa-tracker-source-artifacts §7. Encode it on every UI-touching story.
Phase 2: Codebase + Live Product Research
Two complementary inputs ground PRD analysis: the code (what's there to reuse / extend) and the live product (what users see today). Skipping either produces tickets that misjudge the change.
2a. Codebase research. If the session doesn't already have codebase context, explore the repos to understand what exists. Use Explore agents for repos not yet examined. Skip repos already explored in the current session.
Key things to look for:
- Existing entities/modules that overlap with the PRD
- Patterns to reuse (auth decorators, S3 services, existing UI components)
- Data model gaps the PRD requires (new fields, new entities)
- The tech stack per repo (framework, ORM, UI library, deployment)
2b. Live product walkthrough. If the PRD touches existing user-facing surfaces (modifies a screen, adds something next to existing functionality, fixes current behavior, re-styles an existing flow), invoke the lisa-product-walkthrough skill against E2E_BASE_URL using the test user from config. This grounds the ticket plan in what's actually shipped — design-vs-current-product divergence, reuse candidates, and behavioral surprises that the PRD didn't anticipate become inputs to ticket creation rather than discoveries during implementation.
Skip 2b only when the work is purely backend with no user-visible surface, or affects a screen that does not yet exist in dev/prod.
Walkthrough findings are attached to the originating Notion PRD as a comment ("Current product walkthrough — <route>") and inherited onto the resulting epic / stories under a ## Current Product subsection.
Phase 3: Create Epics
Mode guard: In dry_run: true mode, do not invoke lisa-tracker-write in this phase. Instead, draft the epic spec (summary, description_body, artifacts) and validate it with lisa-tracker-validate --spec-only. Record the drafted spec (including a placeholder epic key like DRY-RUN-EPIC-1) for Phase 4 to use as parent references. In dry_run: false mode (default), proceed as described below.
For each PRD epic, invoke the lisa-tracker-write skill (do not call createJiraIssue directly). Pass it everything it needs to enforce its quality gates:
project_key: resolved by lisa-tracker-write from .lisa.config.jsonissue_type: Epicsummary: epic title from the PRDdescription_body: a draft of the 3-audience description containing:
- Context / Business Value: epic summary from the PRD, originating Notion URL, business outcome
- Technical Approach: cross-cutting integration points and constraints surfaced in Phase 2 codebase research
- List of user stories the epic contains
- Key decisions from comments (with attribution)
- Blockers and open questions
- Dependencies on other epics or PRDs
- A Source Artifacts section listing every artifact extracted in Phase 1.5 (grouped by domain)
artifacts: the full Phase 1.5 artifact list — every artifact, regardless of domain. The epic is the canonical hub, and anyone working on the epic or its descendants must be able to reach the full set from one place. No filtering at the epic level. lisa-tracker-write Phase 4c attaches them as remote links.priority, labels, components, fix_version: as appropriate
Leaf-only build-ready (leaf-only-lifecycle): an Epic is a container, not a leaf work unit. Do NOT mark it build-ready — lisa-tracker-write must not be passed status:ready for an Epic, and the Epic's lifecycle state rolls up from its children. The build-ready label is applied only in Phase 5.
Capture the returned epic key — Phase 4 needs it as the parent for stories.
Phase 4: Create Stories
Mode guard: In dry_run: true mode, do not invoke lisa-tracker-write in this phase. Instead, draft each story spec and validate it with lisa-tracker-validate --spec-only. Use placeholder keys (e.g. DRY-RUN-STORY-1.1) for any downstream references. In dry_run: false mode (default), proceed as described below.
For each Epic, plan two kinds of stories:
- One "X.0 Setup" story for data model and infrastructure prerequisites (new entities, migrations, new fields, infrastructure like S3 buckets or SQS queues)
- One story per user story from the PRD (numbered to match the PRD)
Story naming convention: Prefix the summary with a short code derived from the PRD title:
- "Contract Upload" ->
[CU-1.1]
- "Squad Planning" ->
[SP-1.1]
- Use your judgment for other PRDs
For each story, invoke lisa-tracker-write with:
project_key: resolved by lisa-tracker-write from .lisa.config.jsonissue_type: Storyepic_parent: the Epic key captured in Phase 3 (mandatory — lisa-tracker-write rejects non-bug, non-epic tickets without an epic parent)summary: prefixed per the naming convention abovedescription_body: a draft of the 3-audience description containing:
- Context / Business Value: the user story statement from the PRD
- Technical Approach: notes from engineering comments and Phase 2 codebase research
- Acceptance Criteria (Gherkin) derived from the functional requirements —
lisa-tracker-write will reject prose-only acceptance criteria
- Blockers with recommendation + alternatives (if any), under
## Open Questions
- A Source Artifacts section listing the artifacts inherited from the epic that match this story's scope (see propagation rules below)
artifacts: the Phase 1.5 artifacts filtered by domain per the inheritance table below — lisa-tracker-write Phase 4c attaches them as remote linkspriority, labels, components, fix_version: as appropriate
Leaf-only build-ready (leaf-only-lifecycle): a Story is a container (it has child Sub-tasks), not a leaf work unit. Do NOT mark it build-ready — never pass status:ready to lisa-tracker-write for a Story. Its lifecycle state rolls up from its Sub-tasks. The build-ready label is applied only in Phase 5.
Capture each returned story key — Phase 5 needs it as the parent for sub-tasks.
Inherit domain-matching artifacts as story remote links. For each story, the artifact set passed to lisa-tracker-write should be the Phase 1.5 artifacts whose domain matches the story's scope:
| Story type | Inherits domains |
|---|
| Frontend / UI | ui-design, ux-flow, reference |
| Backend / API / data model | data, reference |
| Infrastructure | ops, reference |
| Mixed / setup ("X.0") | All domains |
When classification is ambiguous, err on the side of inclusion — a developer can ignore a link, but they can't inherit one that wasn't attached. Classification mistakes are caught by the preservation gate in Phase 5.5 and by the human reviewing the final report.
Phase 5: Create Sub-tasks
Auto-split cross-repo work before delegation. For each candidate sub-task, apply lisa-task-decomposition step 1.5: if the work touches more than one repo, split it into one sub-task per repo under the same parent Story (e.g., [backend-api] Add field + [mobile-app] Display field), and encode the producer-before-consumer ordering via dependencies. Work units that may span repos (Epic, Story, Spike) stay as planned; work units that must be single-repo (Bug, Task, Sub-task, Improvement) are split now. Splitting is this skill's responsibility — the validator's S10 gate is product_relevant: false because cross-repo failures are decomposition errors caught here, not product questions sent back to the PRD.
S10 hard gate repair loop. Dry-run validation is not advisory. Before any Phase 5 write, every planned leaf spec MUST pass lisa-tracker-validate --spec-only for S10 Single-repo scope. If any Bug / Task / Sub-task / Improvement fails S10 (missing Repository, more than one repo, or cross-repo AC), stop the write path, auto-split or restamp the spec using lisa-task-decomposition step 1.5, add the repo bracket and ## Repository / h2. Repository section, then re-run lisa-tracker-validate --spec-only. If S10 still fails after repair, abort the ticket write and record an internal Error in the dry-run report; do not create the ticket, do not bypass with direct vendor writes, and do not surface the product_relevant: false failure as a product clarification.
Delegate sub-task creation to parallel agents (one per epic or batch of stories) for efficiency. Every spawned agent must invoke lisa-tracker-write for each sub-task — no agent may call createJiraIssue directly. This is non-negotiable; see the Agent Prompt Template at the bottom of this skill for the exact instructions to pass.
Each sub-task MUST:
- Be scoped to exactly ONE repo — indicated in brackets in the summary:
[repo-name] and in the description's ## Repository / h2. Repository section. lisa-tracker-write enforces single-repo scope on Sub-task; cross-repo or unscoped sub-tasks will be rejected and must be split/restamped before delegation.
- Include an Empirical Verification Plan — real user-like verification, NOT unit tests, linting, or typechecking
Leaf-only build-ready (leaf-only-lifecycle): Sub-tasks are the leaf work units of the decomposition — they are the ONLY items in the hierarchy that receive the build-ready label. lisa-tracker-write applies status:ready here so downstream build intake (lisa-tracker-build-intake) claims the leaves and never the Epic or Stories. Apply status:ready to each Sub-task; never to its parent Story or Epic (Phases 3–4). lisa-tracker-write enforces the same invariant on the write side, so a Sub-task split into per-repo children (the cross-repo case above) carries build-ready on the children, not on any intermediate parent that gains child work.
Verification plan examples by stack:
- Backend APIs: curl GraphQL/REST calls with auth token, database queries, checking audit entries
- Frontend web: Playwright browser tests (login with test user, navigate, interact, screenshot)
- Infrastructure:
cdk synth / terraform plan verification, CLI checks after deploy
Use the test user credentials from config for all verification plans. The credentials are passed to lisa-tracker-write as the sign-in account so it can record them in the description per its own rules.
For each sub-task, the spawned agent invokes lisa-tracker-write with issue_type: "Sub-task" and parent set to the Story key. The Story key is the parent — the epic relationship is inherited transitively.
Sub-tasks inherit their parent story's artifacts by reference (the parent link). Do not pass the same artifact list to every sub-task — that creates noise. The only exception is when a sub-task depends on an artifact that the parent story doesn't (e.g., a sub-task spec'd from a specific Figma frame that the broader story doesn't cite) — in that case, pass the specific artifact in the artifacts parameter to lisa-tracker-write.
Phase 5.5: Artifact Preservation Gate (mandatory)
Run the preservation gate defined in lisa-tracker-source-artifacts §8 against the artifacts extracted in Phase 1.5 and the tickets just created. Do NOT restate or modify the gate logic here — invoke the rules from lisa-tracker-source-artifacts so any rule change propagates uniformly.
To run the gate, this skill must:
- Pull the remote links of every epic and story created in this run via
lisa-tracker-read (vendor-neutral; dispatches to jira-read-ticket or github-read-issue).
- Apply the §8 preservation matrix and verdict rules.
- If the gate fails: list each dropped/misrouted artifact (domain, title, source page, why it was dropped) and either re-attach via
lisa-tracker-write (UPDATE mode) or stop and ask the human. Never silently proceed past a gate failure.
- If the gate passes: print the matrix compactly and proceed to Phase 6.
This gate is not optional. Skipping it is the failure mode the architecture exists to prevent.
Phase 6: Report Results
After all tickets are created, present a summary table to the user:
- All Epics with keys and URLs
- All Stories grouped by Epic
- All Sub-tasks grouped by Story with repo tags
- Repo distribution (how many tasks per repo)
- Artifact Preservation Matrix — one row per artifact showing which epic/stories reference it
- Blockers list with recommendations and alternatives
- Cross-PRD dependencies
Phase 7: PRD Back-link
Mode guard: In dry_run: true mode, skip this phase entirely — no tickets exist to link.
After Phase 6, invoke the lisa-prd-backlink skill to write a ## Tickets section back into the source PRD. The section becomes the canonical anchor for the Debrief flow once the initiative ships, and gives any human reading the PRD months later a one-click path to every work item created from it.
Invoke lisa-prd-backlink with:
source_type: "notion"source_ref: the original PRD URLtickets: the full list created in Phases 3–5, each entry as { key, title, type, url, parent_key }
If lisa-prd-backlink fails (PRD permission denied, Notion unreachable, source mutated mid-run), surface the error in the Phase 6 report rather than aborting — the tickets are already created and their value to the team is not blocked by the back-link write. Recommend the user re-run lisa-prd-backlink standalone once the source is reachable again.
Handling Ambiguities and Blockers
When you encounter something the PRD + comments + codebase can't resolve:
- Don't guess — mark the ticket with a BLOCKER section
- Include your recommendation with rationale (what you'd pick and why)
- List 2-3 alternatives so the user/product can choose
- State what's needed to unblock (e.g., "Product decision on X", "Sync with Y on Z")
Common blocker categories:
- Missing data model decisions (field types, entity relationships)
- Permission model unclear (who can view/edit)
- UX decisions not finalized (display format, input mechanism)
- Cross-team dependencies (shared infrastructure, coordinated rollouts)
- Preset values not defined (enums, tags, labels)
Agent Prompt Template for Sub-task Creation
When delegating to agents, provide this context. The "MUST invoke jira-write-ticket" instruction is load-bearing — do not edit it out when adapting this template.
Create JIRA sub-tasks in the [PROJECT] project at [CLOUD_ID].
CRITICAL: For each sub-task, invoke the `lisa-tracker-write` skill via the Skill tool.
Do NOT call `mcp__atlassian__createJiraIssue` directly. The `lisa-tracker-write` skill
enforces required quality gates (Gherkin acceptance criteria, 3-audience description,
single-repo scope, sign-in/environment fields, post-create verification). Bypassing it
produces broken tickets that downstream skills (triage, journey, evidence) cannot use.
For each sub-task, invoke `lisa-tracker-write` with:
- issue_type: "Sub-task"
- parent: the parent story key
- project_key: [PROJECT]
- summary: prefixed with the repo in brackets, e.g. "[backend-api] Add audit log table"
- description_body: a 3-section draft (Context / Technical Approach / Acceptance Criteria) plus `h2. Repository` naming exactly one repo
- gherkin_acceptance_criteria: derived from the story's functional requirements
- sign_in_account: [test user credentials from config — name + role + how to obtain]
- target_environment: "dev"
- empirical_verification_plan: real user-like verification (curl + auth token,
Playwright browser flow, CLI check after deploy) using the test credentials.
NOT unit tests, linting, or typechecking.
Each sub-task must:
1. Be scoped to ONE repo only — repo named in brackets in the summary and in `h2. Repository`
2. Include the Empirical Verification Plan in the description
3. Be created via `lisa-tracker-write`, not via direct MCP calls
If `lisa-tracker-write` rejects a sub-task (cross-repo scope, missing Gherkin, missing
sign-in, etc.), fix the input and re-invoke. Do NOT fall back to a direct
`createJiraIssue` call to bypass the gate.
Test user info: [credentials from config]
[Then list all sub-tasks grouped by parent story with details]
Cross-PRD Shared Infrastructure
Track tickets that are shared across PRDs to avoid duplication.
When a sub-task overlaps with an existing ticket, reference it instead of creating a duplicate.
Search JIRA for existing tickets in the project before creating new ones for shared infrastructure.
