refine

A skill for turning rough GitHub issues into organized epics and user stories. GitHub issues are records of work, while epics group larger pieces of that work.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to refine issues, define acceptance criteria, split epics into GitHub sub-issues, and preview changes before updating them.
Why use it?
It helps clarify incomplete requests and break large work into smaller, reviewable parts without guessing missing requirements.

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/ondrasek/cc-plugins/refine
Any agent
npx skills add ondrasek/cc-plugins --skill refine
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ondrasek/cc-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 30 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,839 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 $0.00030 $0.01839
Opus 5 $0.00015 $0.00920
Sonnet 5 $0.00006 $0.00368
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00184

Measured 2d ago against content hash aeb4102deb58, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

refine 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 2d 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.

plugins/github-issues/skills/refine/SKILL.md · 212 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 212 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Refine

Transforms rough or incomplete issues into well-structured epics and user stories using proven techniques.

Critical Rules

  • Read cross-cutting behaviors first: skills/shared/references/cross-cutting.md
  • Always read the current issue content before refining — never assume
  • Ask clarifying questions when information is missing — don't guess at requirements
  • Preview all changes with the user before updating the issue
  • Add a refinement comment to every refined issue explaining what changed
  • NEVER create priority labels — see skills/shared/references/label-taxonomy.md
  • Use GitHub sub-issues for epic decomposition (not task-list checkboxes)

Prerequisites Check

gh auth status

Reference Files

Read these on demand based on the refinement type:

  • references/epic-guide.md — epic structure, scope definition, decomposition heuristics
  • references/user-story-guide.md — user story format, INVEST criteria, acceptance criteria patterns
  • references/splitting-techniques.md — 9 SPIDR techniques for breaking down stories

Capabilities

1. Refine to User Story

Take a rough or empty issue and refine it into a well-structured user story.

Workflow:

  1. Read the issue:

    gh issue view NUMBER --json number,title,body,labels,assignees,comments
    
  2. Assess completeness — identify what's missing:

    • Who is the user/persona?
    • What do they want to achieve?
    • Why does it matter (business value)?
    • What are the boundaries (in-scope vs out-of-scope)?
    • What does "done" look like?
  3. Ask clarifying questions — present gaps to the user and ask for input. Do not fabricate requirements.

  4. Draft the refined issue body (read references/user-story-guide.md for format):

    • User story statement: "As a [user], I want [goal], so that [benefit]"
    • Context and background
    • Acceptance criteria (Given/When/Then or checklist)
    • Out of scope (explicitly state what this does NOT cover)
    • Technical notes (if relevant)
    • Related issues (from cross-cutting search)

Read the full file on GitHub · 212 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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. 2d ago First seen · 212 lines · 30 tokens per session scan A aeb4102deb58

Subscribe to this mod's changes

refine is a skill published in the GitHub repository ondrasek/cc-plugins (2 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 30 tokens to every session and 1,839 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 2026-08-31.

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