epic-breakdown-advisor

epic-breakdown-advisor is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin. It costs 38 tokens per session (5,443 once invoked), scanned A, a copy of epic-breakdown-advisor, MIT.

A method for splitting a large product backlog item, called an epic, into smaller user stories. User stories describe a change from the user's point of view and are split into complete slices of user value.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to check whether a story is ready to split, apply nine splitting patterns, create smaller stories, and identify low-value work that can be removed.
Why use it?
It makes work that is too large to estimate, schedule, or deliver safely easier to handle. The method helps avoid splitting work into isolated technical layers that deliver no usable result on their own.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the pm plugin — 9 skills, 6 commands, 1 agent shipped together

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin/epic-breakdown-advisor
Any agent
npx skills add derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin --skill epic-breakdown-advisor
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install pm, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 9 skills, 6 commands, 1 agent.

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 epic-breakdown-advisor

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin/epic-breakdown-advisor.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin/epic-breakdown-advisor)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin/epic-breakdown-advisor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin/epic-breakdown-advisor.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 38 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 5,443 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00038 $0.05443
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.02721
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.01089
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00544

Measured 4d ago against content hash bfe717bfb231, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

epic-breakdown-advisor 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 4d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to epic-breakdown-advisor — 3 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

plugins/pm/pm-workflow/skills/epic-breakdown-advisor/SKILL.md · 669 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 669 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Purpose

Guide product managers through breaking down epics into user stories using Richard Lawrence's complete Humanizing Work methodology—a systematic, flowchart-driven approach that applies 9 splitting patterns sequentially. Use this to identify which pattern applies, split while preserving user value, and evaluate splits based on what they reveal about low-value work you can eliminate. This ensures vertical slicing (end-to-end value) rather than horizontal slicing (technical layers).

This is not arbitrary slicing—it's a proven, methodical process that starts with validation, walks through patterns in order, and evaluates results strategically.

Key Concepts

Core Principles: Vertical Slices Preserve Value

A user story is "a description of a change in system behavior from the perspective of a user." Splitting must maintain vertical slices—work that touches multiple architectural layers and delivers observable user value—not horizontal slices addressing single components (e.g., "front-end story" + "back-end story").

The Three-Step Process

  1. Pre-Split Validation: Check if story satisfies INVEST criteria (except "Small")
  2. Apply Splitting Patterns: Work through 9 patterns sequentially until one fits
  3. Evaluate Splits: Choose the split that reveals low-value work or produces equal-sized stories

The 9 Splitting Patterns (In Order)

  1. Workflow Steps — Thin end-to-end slices, not step-by-step
  2. Operations (CRUD) — Create, Read, Update, Delete as separate stories
  3. Business Rule Variations — Different rules = different stories
  4. Data Variations — Different data types/structures
  5. Data Entry Methods — Simple UI first, fancy UI later
  6. Major Effort — "Implement one + add remaining"
  7. Simple/Complex — Core simplest version first, variations later
  8. Defer Performance — "Make it work" before "make it fast"
  9. Break Out a Spike — Time-box investigation when uncertainty blocks splitting

Meta-Pattern (Applies Across All Patterns)

  1. Identify the core complexity
  2. List all variations
  3. Reduce variations to one complete slice
  4. Make other variations separate stories

Read the full file on GitHub · 669 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 4d ago First seen · 669 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A bfe717bfb231

Subscribe to this mod's changes

epic-breakdown-advisor is a skill published in the GitHub repository derricktang/pm-workflow-plugin (2 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 5,443 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to epic-breakdown-advisor, differing in 3 lines, and is treated as a copy.