epic-breakdown-advisor

epic-breakdown-advisor is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from getcrew44/crew44. It costs 38 tokens per session (5,400 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A method for turning large product plans, called epics, into smaller user stories that each deliver visible value to a user.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to split backlog items into smaller, end-to-end pieces of work that are easier to estimate, sequence, and deliver.
Why use it?
It helps when work is too large to estimate, order, or deliver safely. It keeps teams from dividing work into isolated technical layers that do not provide usable results on their own.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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/getcrew44/crew44/epic-breakdown-advisor
Any agent
npx skills add getcrew44/crew44 --skill epic-breakdown-advisor
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/getcrew44/crew44

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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/getcrew44/crew44/epic-breakdown-advisor.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/getcrew44/crew44/epic-breakdown-advisor)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/getcrew44/crew44/epic-breakdown-advisor"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/getcrew44/crew44/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 5,400 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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 $0.00038 $0.05400
Opus 5 $0.00019 $0.02700
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.01080
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00540

Measured 4d ago against content hash b1bda5807284, 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

Copies of this mod

1 near-identical copy found in the catalogue:

daemon/internal/presets/defaultcrew/skills/product/epic-breakdown-advisor/SKILL.md · 666 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 666 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 · 666 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. 4d ago First seen · 666 lines · 38 tokens per session scan A b1bda5807284

Subscribe to this mod's changes

epic-breakdown-advisor is a skill published in the GitHub repository getcrew44/crew44 (359 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 38 tokens to every session and 5,400 once invoked, about $0.0002 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 2026-08-30.