create-backlog

A method for turning a plan, specification, or product requirements document into small, independent issues in a project tracker. Each issue covers a complete, testable slice of work across the needed parts of the system.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to break features into implementation tickets, show dependencies between them, use the project's terminology, and prepare issues for review before creating them in a tracker.
Why use it?
It prevents large plans from becoming vague tickets or work split only by technical layer. The result is work that can be picked up independently and checked on its 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/wmeints/awesome-claude-code/create-backlog
Any agent
npx skills add wmeints/awesome-claude-code --skill create-backlog
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/wmeints/awesome-claude-code

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 53 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 626 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 84% 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 $0.00053 $0.00626
Opus 5 $0.00026 $0.00313
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00125
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00063

Measured 2d ago against content hash dc8b5386cf9a, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

create-backlog 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.

Origin

This is a copy

84% identical to to-issues — 55 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.

.claude/skills/create-backlog/SKILL.md · 89 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 89 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

To Issues

Break a plan into independently-grabbable issues using vertical slices (tracer bullets).

Process

1. Gather context

Work from whatever is already in the conversation context. If the user passes an issue reference (issue number, URL, or path) as an argument, fetch it from the issue tracker and read its full body and comments.

2. Explore the codebase (optional)

If you have not already explored the codebase, do so to understand the current state of the code. Issue titles and descriptions should use the project's domain glossary vocabulary, and respect ADRs in the area you're touching.

3. Draft vertical slices

Break the plan into issues where each issue is a thin vertical slice that cuts through ALL integration layers end-to-end, NOT a horizontal slice of one layer.

  • Each slice delivers a narrow but COMPLETE path through every layer (schema, API, UI, tests)
  • A completed slice is demoable or verifiable on its own
  • Prefer many thin slices over few thick ones

4. Quiz the user

Present the proposed breakdown as a numbered list. For each slice, show:

  • Title: short descriptive name
  • Blocked by: which other slices (if any) must complete first
  • User stories covered: which user stories this addresses (if the source material has them)

Ask the user:

  • Does the granularity feel right? (too coarse / too fine)
  • Are the dependency relationships correct?
  • Should any slices be merged or split further?
  • Are the correct slices marked as HITL and AFK?

Iterate until the user approves the breakdown.

5. Publish the issues to the issue tracker

For each approved slice, publish a new issue to the issue tracker. Use the issue body template below. Apply the needs-triage triage label so each issue enters the normal triage flow.

Publish issues in dependency order (blockers first) so you can reference real issue identifiers in the "Blocked by" field.

A reference to the parent issue on the issue tracker (if the source was an existing issue, otherwise omit this section).

Read the full file on GitHub · 89 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. 2d ago First seen · 89 lines · 53 tokens per session scan A dc8b5386cf9a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

create-backlog is a skill published in the GitHub repository wmeints/awesome-claude-code (1 stars, last pushed 4mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 53 tokens to every session and 626 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 84% identical to to-issues, differing in 55 lines, and is treated as a copy.