PRD — Product Requirement Document & 5-Phase Feature Lifecycle

This skill manages the full feature lifecycle through 5 phases: Discover → Design → Sprint → Review → Release

With a living roadmap, state tracking, iteration loops, and session persistence.

The Complete Hierarchy

PROJECT LEVEL (one-time):
  /kickstart    → idea → research → monetize → feature roadmap → stack → architecture
  /bootstrap    → scaffold → .claude/ → CLAUDE.md → .prd/ → .context/ → deploy config

FEATURE LEVEL (repeatable):
  /new "feature" → creates feature entry → enters Phase 1

PHASE LEVEL (the 5-phase cycle):
  /discover     → Phase 1: Discovery (11 Elements)
  /design       → Phase 2: Design (Stitch MCP)
  /sprint       → Phase 3: Sprint Execution (plan → build → review → QA → UAT → merge)
  /review       → Phase 4: Review & Retro (+ iteration loop)
  /release      → Phase 5: Release Management (Dev → Staging → RC → Production)

Architecture

Commands (entry points)          Workflows (logic)              Agents (specialists)
─────────────────────           ─────────────────              ──────────────────────

Project Level:
/kickstart ───────────→ kickstart skill ───────────→ (intake → research → monetize → roadmap)
/bootstrap ───────────→ cicd-starter skill ────────→ (scaffold → .claude/ → .prd/)

Feature Level:
/cks:new ─────────────→ new-project + discover ────→ prd-discoverer
/cks:autonomous ──────→ autonomous.md ─────────────→ (all agents, 5 phases)

Phase Level:
/cks:discover ────────→ discover-phase.md ─────────→ prd-discoverer (11 elements)
/cks:design ──────────→ design-phase.md ───────────→ prd-designer (Stitch MCP)
/cks:sprint ──────────→ sprint-phase.md ───────────→ prd-planner + prd-executor + prd-verifier
/cks:review ──────────→ review-phase.md ───────────→ (feedback + retro + iteration decision)
/cks:release ─────────→ release-phase.md ──────────→ (env promotion + quality gates)

Routing:
/cks:next ────────────→ next.md ───────────────────→ (auto-chains via Skill())
/cks:progress ────────→ progress.md ───────────────→ (read-only dashboard)
/cks:status ──────────→ (inline) ──────────────────→ (read-only)

Daily Actions (PRD-aware):
/cks:go ──────────────→ go.md ─────────────────────→ build → commit → push → PR
/cks:go commit|pr|dev|build → sub-actions (all read PRD state, hint next step)

Utility (integrated into lifecycle):
/cks:context ─────────→ context-research/SKILL.md ──→ (auto-runs in discover)
/cks:doctor ──────────→ (inline diagnostics) ───────→ (auto-runs pre-release)
/cks:changelog ───────→ (inline git analysis) ──────→ (auto-runs post-release)
/cks:retro ───────────→ retrospective/SKILL.md ─────→ (auto-runs in review phase)

Deprecated (redirect):
/cks:discuss ─────────→ redirects to /cks:discover
/cks:plan ────────────→ redirects to /cks:sprint
/cks:execute ─────────→ redirects to /cks:sprint
/cks:verify ──────────→ redirects to /cks:sprint
/cks:ship ────────────→ redirects to /cks:release

Hooks (automatic):
SessionStart ─────────→ Show PRD status if .prd/ exists
Stop ─────────────────→ Warn about uncommitted changes

Commands

Phase Commands

Command	Phase	Description
/cks:discover [phase]	Phase 1	Discovery — 11 Elements (problem, stories, scope, API surface, criteria, constraints, test plan, UAT, DoD, KPIs, cross-project deps)
/cks:design [phase]	Phase 2	Design — UX research, screen generation (Stitch MCP), component specs
/cks:sprint [phase]	Phase 3	Sprint — planning [3a], TDD [3b], implement [3c], code review [3d], QA [3e], UAT [3f], merge [3g]
/cks:review [phase]	Phase 4	Review — sprint review [4a], retro [4b], backlog refinement [4c], iteration decision [4d]
/cks:release [phase|all]	Phase 5	Release — Dev [5a], Staging [5b], RC + E2E [5c], Production [5d], Post-deploy [5e]

Lifecycle Commands

Command	Description
/cks:new [brief]	Create new feature → enter Phase 1
/cks:next	Auto-advance to next step (respects iteration loops)
/cks:autonomous [--from N]	Run all 5 phases without stopping
/cks:progress	Show 5-phase progress dashboard + suggest next action
/cks:status	Quick project status overview

Utility Commands

Command	Description
/cks:go [commit|pr|dev|build]	Daily quick actions (PRD-aware)
/cks:context [topic]	Research technology → .context/ (auto-runs in discover)
/cks:doctor	Health diagnostic (auto-runs pre-release)
/cks:changelog	Generate CHANGELOG.md (auto-runs post-release)
/cks:retro [--auto]	Retrospective (auto-runs in review phase)
/cks:research [topic]	Deep multi-hop research → .research/
/cks:logs [flags]	View and query lifecycle logs — filter by feature, phase, severity, date

Agent Team

Agent	File	Role
prd-orchestrator	agents/prd-orchestrator.md	Drives full lifecycle — dispatches all other agents
prd-discoverer	agents/prd-discoverer.md	Phase 1: Discovery — 11 elements, codebase research, manifest-aware
prd-designer	agents/prd-designer.md	Phase 2: Design — Stitch MCP screens, component specs
prd-planner	agents/prd-planner.md	Phase 3 [3a-3b]: Sprint planning + technical design
prd-executor	agents/prd-executor.md	Phase 3 [3c]: Implementation
prd-verifier	agents/prd-verifier.md	Phase 3 [3e]: QA validation
prd-researcher	agents/prd-researcher.md	Utility: codebase + technology investigation

The Iteration Loop

Phase 4 (Review) contains the iteration decision [4d] that routes back to the correct phase:

Phase 4: Review
  [4d] Iteration Decision
    ├── "UX issues"           → back to Phase 2 (Design)
    ├── "Logic bugs"          → back to Phase 3 (Sprint)
    ├── "Requirements changed" → back to Phase 1 (Discovery)
    └── "Ready to release"    → forward to Phase 5 (Release)

/cks:next respects this routing — it reads phase_status from STATE.md:

• iterating_design → invokes /cks:design
• iterating_sprint → invokes /cks:sprint
• iterating_discover → invokes /cks:discover
• reviewed → invokes /cks:release

AskUserQuestion Rule

CRITICAL: All user interactions across ALL phases MUST use AskUserQuestion with selectable options. No plain text terminal questions. This applies to:

• Discovery Q&A (all 11 elements)
• Design decisions (screen approval, variants, sign-off)
• Sprint scope confirmation
• QA failure routing
• UAT approval
• Review feedback
• Iteration decisions
• Release quality gates

Progress Tracker

Every phase displays a progress banner with sub-steps:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 PRD ► Phase {NN}: {name} ► {PHASE_NAME}
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

 [1] Discover    {✅ done | ▶ current | ○ pending}
 [2] Design      {✅ done | ▶ current | ○ pending}
 [3] Sprint      {✅ done | ▶ current | ○ pending}
 [4] Review      {✅ done | ▶ current | ○ pending}
 [5] Release     {✅ done | ▶ current | ○ pending}

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Derive status from filesystem artifacts:

• Discover done: {NN}-CONTEXT.md exists
• Design done: {NN}-DESIGN.md exists
• Sprint done: {NN}-SUMMARY.md + {NN}-VERIFICATION.md exist
• Review done: {NN}-REVIEW.md exists
• Release done: phase_status == "released" in STATE.md

Context Reset Between Phases

Each phase ends with:

━━━ Context Reset ━━━
Phase artifacts saved. Clear context and continue:
  /clear
  /cks:next
State is on disk — nothing is lost.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

All state lives in .prd/ — nothing is lost on /clear.

State Machine

not_started → discovering → discovered → designing → designed →
  sprinting → sprinted → reviewing → reviewed → releasing → released
                ↑            ↑           ↑
                └────────────┴───────────┘
                   iteration loop (from Phase 4)

iterating_design  → designing (back to Phase 2)
iterating_sprint  → sprinting (back to Phase 3)
iterating_discover → discovering (back to Phase 1)

File System

See references/filesystem.md for the full directory layout.

Key paths: .prd/PRD-STATE.md (state), .prd/phases/{NN}-{slug}/ (artifacts), .prd/logs/lifecycle.jsonl (events).

Customization

This skill ships with opinionated defaults. Review and adapt to your needs:

• Phase workflow: Step-by-step instructions for each phase — edit files in workflows/
• Gate criteria: What must be true before advancing phases — edit workflow step files
• Iteration limits: Max iterations before escalating (default 3) — edit SKILL.md
• Agent prompts: How agents are instructed — edit agent files in ../agents/
• Templates: Output document formats — edit files in templates/
• No tool restrictions: This skill orchestrates everything and needs full tool access.

Common Rationalizations

Rationalization	Reality
"This feature is too simple for a PRD"	Simple features in unknown systems create cascading bugs. The PRD takes 10 minutes; the rework takes hours.
"We already know what to build"	Knowing the what without documenting the why leads to scope creep and misaligned expectations.
"Discovery slows us down"	Skipping discovery means discovering requirements during implementation — the most expensive time to learn.
"The user will tell us if it's wrong"	Users report symptoms, not root causes. Discovery prevents building the wrong thing entirely.

Rules

1. AskUserQuestion for ALL interactions — no plain text questions, ever
2. No interruptions in autonomous mode — Discoverer/Designer use autonomous mode
3. Commit after each sprint phase — Atomic history, recoverable
4. Max 1 iteration in autonomous — Prevents infinite loops
5. State after every step — STATE.md updated constantly
6. Filesystem is truth — re-scan artifacts, don't trust stale state
7. Agents stay in their lane — Discoverer discovers, Designer designs, Executor codes
8. Design before code — Phase 2 must complete before Phase 3 starts
9. Quality gates in release — not skipped even in autonomous mode