decompose

Decompose — Task Breakdown

Break a phase into atomic beads and sub-beads for agent execution.

Design rationale: This skill uses the orchestrator-subagent pattern because decomposition involves substantial cognitive work: understanding the phase, creating a lossless manifest, generating beads, setting dependencies, and validation. The "Create Beads" phase is especially critical—when an agent reads a 1000-line phase doc directly, it summarizes. With subagents, the manifest captures everything first, preventing information loss.

When This Applies

Signal	Action
User says "decompose" or "break down"	Run full protocol
Have a phase plan ready	Decompose into beads
User says "/decompose"	Run full protocol
Need to structure work for agents	Create bead hierarchy

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Tool Reference

File Operations

Tool	Purpose
Read(phase_doc_path)	Read phase document
Read(north_star_path)	Read North Star for context
Write(file_path, content)	Write manifest, reports

Beads (Task Tracking)

Command	Purpose
bd create --title "..." --body "..."	Create parent bead
bd create --parent <id> --title "..."	Create sub-bead
bd dep add <child> <blocker>	Set dependency
bd list --json	List all beads

BV (Graph Intelligence)

Command	Purpose
bv --robot-suggest	Find missing dependencies
bv --robot-plan	Validate execution order
bv --robot-alerts	Check for risks/cycles

Sub-Bead Suffix Convention

Suffix	Purpose
.1	Schema/types/models
.2-.3	Core implementation
.4-.8	Tests
.9	Integration/wiring
.10	Documentation

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Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    DECOMPOSE ORCHESTRATOR                        │
│  - Creates session: sessions/decompose-{timestamp}/              │
│  - Manages TodoWrite state                                       │
│  - Spawns subagents with minimal context                         │
│  - Passes manifest (not phase doc) to Create Beads phase         │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                              │
         ┌────────────────────┼────────────────────┐
         │                    │                    │
         ▼                    ▼                    ▼
┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐
│  Understand     │  │    Manifest     │  │  Create Beads   │
│  agents/        │  │  agents/        │  │  agents/        │
│  understand.md  │  │  manifest.md    │  │  create-beads.md│
└────────┬────────┘  └────────┬────────┘  └────────┬────────┘
         │                    │                    │
    01_understanding     02_manifest.md      03_beads_created
         │                    │                    │
         └────────────────────┼────────────────────┘
                              │
         ┌────────────────────┼────────────────────┐
         ▼                    ▼
┌─────────────────┐  ┌─────────────────┐
│  Dependencies   │  │    Validate     │ → Ready for execution
│  agents/        │  │  agents/        │
│  dependencies.md│  │  validate.md    │
└────────┬────────┘  └────────┬────────┘
         │                    │
    04_dependencies      05_validation