Step 3 Breakdown

Step 3 · Breakdown

Command: /breakdown [feature] · Habit: H3 Put First Things First · Previous: Step 2 · Design · Next: Step 4 · Build Brief

Purpose

Decompose a feature into atomic tasks — 1 task per focused unit of work. Prevents "one giant prompt that tries to do everything at once."

When to use

• Any feature with >1 distinct concern
• Any work that could be parallelized
• Any time you're tempted to write a 500-word prompt

When to skip

• Single-file change with no dependencies
• Bug fix with single touch point
• Tasks already broken down in an external tracker

Process

1. Read PRD and design decisions from previous steps
2. Decompose — each task in 1 sentence, ≤5 files, explicit dependencies
3. Prioritize by Covey's Quadrants: Q2 > Q1 > Q3, eliminate Q4 (gold-plating)
4. Classify orchestration: sequential, parallel-safe, parallel-worktree
5. Apply the Lazy Parallelism Gate — only parallelize when the cost of coordination is less than the wall-clock savings

Output

| # | Task | Files | Depends | Type | Q |

Handoff

• Expects: Architecture decisions from /design
• Produces for /build-brief: Prioritized task list with dependencies and file paths

H3 Checkpoint

"Am I doing what's important, or what's interesting?"

See also

• Source: skills/breakdown/SKILL.md
• Orchestration patterns guide
• Habits Reference → H3