writing-user-stories

writing-user-stories is a skill for Claude Code from britt/agent-skills. It costs 63 tokens per session (625 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A skill for turning a feature request into user stories with acceptance criteria. A user story describes what a specific person wants to do and why; acceptance criteria state the conditions that must be true for it to be accepted.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to define product or feature requirements, write stories in a standard format, add Given-When-Then scenarios, and check their quality with the INVEST checklist.
Why use it?
It makes vague requirements easier to implement and test, reducing misunderstandings and uncontrolled expansion of the work.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the agent-skills plugin — 28 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to define product or feature requirements, write stories in a standard format, add Given-When-Then scenarios, and check their quality with the INVEST checklist.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/britt/agent-skills/writing-user-stories
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add britt/agent-skills --skill writing-user-stories
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/britt/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install agent-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 28 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for writing-user-stories

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/britt/agent-skills/writing-user-stories/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/britt/agent-skills/writing-user-stories)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/britt/agent-skills/writing-user-stories"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/britt/agent-skills/writing-user-stories/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for writing-user-stories

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/britt/agent-skills/writing-user-stories"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/britt/agent-skills/writing-user-stories.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 63 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 625 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00063 $0.00625
Opus 5 $0.00032 $0.00313
Sonnet 5 $0.00013 $0.00125
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00063

Measured 10d ago against content hash 87d7efded8b4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

writing-user-stories scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 10d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/writing-user-stories/SKILL.md · 77 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 77 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Writing User Stories

Overview

Core principle: User stories are a formulaic way of expressing user requirements. Every story identifies the persona of the actor, what they want to do, and the benefit they hope to gain.

When to Use

  • You are asked to write a user story
  • You are writing GitHub issues for product work or feature requirements
  • You are asked to plan a feature and express its requirements as stories

Not for: full product specifications — use the writing-product-specs skill instead.

Story Format

As a [persona]
I want [action or feature]
So that [benefit or value]

Example:

As a non-technical stakeholder
I want to understand what changed in a release without reading code diffs
So that I can communicate updates to customers effectively

Acceptance Criteria

Add clear, testable conditions in Given-When-Then format:

Given I am viewing the project dashboard
When I click the "Filter" button
Then I see a dropdown with all available labels
And the issue list updates to show only matching issues

Stories without acceptance criteria lead to scope creep, unclear completion, and misaligned expectations.

Quality Checklist (INVEST)

Before finalizing a story, verify it is:

  • Independent - Can be developed separately from other stories
  • Negotiable - Details can be discussed and refined
  • Valuable - Delivers clear value to users or business
  • Estimable - Effort can be estimated reasonably
  • Small - Can be completed in one sprint (typically)
  • Testable - Success criteria are clear and verifiable

Common Pitfalls

Too technical:

  • ❌ "Add a REST endpoint at /api/v2/users with authentication"
  • ✅ "As an admin, I want to manage user accounts via API, so that I can automate user provisioning"

Too vague:

  • ❌ "Make the dashboard better"
  • ✅ "As a manager, I want to see project velocity trends, so that I can forecast delivery dates"

Missing the "why":

  • ❌ "As a user, I want dark mode"
  • ✅ "As a user, I want dark mode, so that I can reduce eye strain during evening work sessions"

Read the full file on GitHub · 77 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 10d ago First seen · 77 lines · 63 tokens per session scan A 87d7efded8b4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

writing-user-stories is a skill published in the GitHub repository britt/agent-skills (5 stars, last pushed 8d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 63 tokens to every session and 625 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

Related

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