User stories
Screens show what an app looks like. Stories say what a person does with it. You build and test stories, not screens.
Read docs/BRIEF.md, docs/research/*.md, and docs/screens/INDEX.md
where they exist. Write docs/STORIES.md.
Story format
markdown### S-012 Complete a task with the keyboard As the user, I select a task and press Command-Return to complete it. Screens: 01-inbox.png, 02-today.png Depends: S-004 Acceptance: - [snap] The circle fills and the row fades out within half a second. - [self] An "Undo" banner shows for five seconds; Command-Z also undoes it. - [unit] A recurring task moves to its next date. Status: todo
- One action per story. "Rename a project from its context menu", not "Manage projects".
- Every acceptance line starts with how it is checked:
[snap]snapshot,[unit]unit test,[self]self-test,[manual]a person must try it. "Works well" is not checkable. Screens:links reference screenshots, soimprove-loopknows what to compare. Without a reference app, name the snapshot pages that will show the story. A panel, sheet, or menu needs its own snapshot page.Depends:(optional) lists stories that must be done first.- Keep a control and the only surface that shows it in one story: a highlighting field that lives only in the quick-add panel ships with the panel.
- Status:
todo,doing,done, ordropped.
Milestones
Each milestone ends with an app the user can use for a day.
- M1 Core loop: the one thing the app is for, end to end. Data survives a restart.
- M2 Organize: the main structure, sidebar pages, moving items.
- M3 Time: dates, Today and Upcoming, recurrence, reminders.
- M4 Speed: quick-add panel, global shortcut, natural language input, keyboard navigation, search, menu commands.
- M5 System: menu bar, Share menu, Shortcuts, notifications, CLI.
- M6 Polish: drag and drop, context menus, empty states, icon, settings.
Rename milestones to fit the app. Inside a milestone, stories that others depend on come first.
Seed data
Every attribute the seed data sets (symbols, colors, notes) is something a story lets the user create in the app. Otherwise snapshots show features no one can use.
Leave things out
Drop what exists only for other people or for the vendor: accounts,
sharing, teams, integrations, upgrade prompts, gamification. List them
under ## Dropped, one line each, so the decision is visible.
UX notes
For each M1 story that adds a screen, an action, or words, call the Skill
tool with ux-design. It adds a UX: block under the acceptance lines and
starts docs/GLOSSARY.md, so every story uses the same names. Later
milestones get their UX notes in improve-loop, just before they are built.
Size check
M1 has 5 to 10 stories. Over 60 stories in total means version one is too
big: move stories to ## Later.
Done when every main job in the brief, every "Version one: yes" row in the
research matrix, and every screen in the index maps to a story or a
Dropped line, and every M1 story with UI has a UX: block.
