# To tickets > Use when an agreed plan has to become ordered tickets in a tracker. Break a plan, spec, or the current conversation into a set of tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges, published to the configured tracker (edges as text in one file per ticket locally, or native blocking links on a real tracker). ## Facts - Type: Agent skill - Discipline: Engineering - Author: Matt Pocock (https://github.com/mattpocock) - Upstream: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/to-tickets - Source file: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mattpocock/skills/main/skills/engineering/to-tickets/SKILL.md (5671 bytes, sha256:5c9fba69845c2519b9b35b9af42ae5142c21f8ca15ac2123dc2722002c8058ae) - Licence: MIT - Upstream copy last changed: 2026-09-17 - Status: listed, not yet ruled on by the curator ## Use it I want to use the To tickets skill by Matt Pocock. This is what it does, in the author's own words: Break a plan, spec, or the current conversation into a set of tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges, published to the configured tracker (edges as text in one file per ticket locally, or native blocking links on a real tracker). Download the whole folder at https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/to-tickets, SKILL.md and every file beside it, into your skills directory: ~/.claude/skills/to-tickets/ for Claude Code, ~/.agents/skills/to-tickets/ for Codex, ~/.cursor/skills/to-tickets/ for Cursor. Get it from the author's repo, not from startupskills.dev. Then tell me the path you installed it to and how to invoke it. Nothing here is vendored: install from the author's repo, not from this site. A verbatim copy of the author's file follows for reading, under the licence reproduced after it; the current file is in the author's repo. ## Links - Page: https://startupskills.dev/mattpocock/to-tickets - Author: https://startupskills.dev/mattpocock - Index: https://startupskills.dev/llms.txt ## The file itself --- name: to-tickets description: Break a plan, spec, or the current conversation into a set of tracer-bullet tickets, each declaring its blocking edges, published to the configured tracker (edges as text in one file per ticket locally, or native blocking links on a real tracker). disable-model-invocation: true --- # To Tickets Break a plan, spec, or conversation into a set of **tickets**: tracer-bullet vertical slices, each declaring the tickets that **block** it. The issue tracker and triage label vocabulary should have been provided to you. If not, tell the user to run `/setup-matt-pocock-skills`. ## Process ### 1. Gather context Work from whatever is already in the conversation context. If the user passes a reference (a spec path, an issue number or URL) as an argument, fetch it 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. Ticket titles and descriptions should use the project's domain glossary vocabulary, and respect ADRs in the area you're touching. Look for opportunities to prefactor the code to make the implementation easier. "Make the change easy, then make the easy change." ### 3. Draft vertical slices Break the work into **tracer bullet** tickets. - Each slice cuts a narrow but COMPLETE path through every layer (schema, API, UI, tests): vertical, NOT a horizontal slice of one layer - A completed slice is demoable or verifiable on its own - Each slice is sized to fit in a single fresh context window - Any prefactoring should be done first Give each ticket its **blocking edges**: the other tickets that must complete before it can start. A ticket with no blockers can start immediately. **Wide refactors are the exception to vertical slicing.** A **wide refactor** is one mechanical change (rename a column, retype a shared symbol) whose **blast radius** fans across the whole codebase, so a single edit breaks thousands of call sites at once and no vertical slice can land green. Don't force it into a tracer bullet; sequence it as **expand–contract**. First expand: add the new form beside the old so nothing breaks. Then migrate the call sites over in batches sized by blast radius (per package, per directory), each batch its own ticket blocked by the expand, keeping CI green batch to batch because the old form still exists. Finally contract: delete the old form once no caller remains, in a ticket blocked by every migrate batch. When even the batches can't stay green alone, keep the sequence but let them share an integration branch that all block a final integrate-and-verify ticket; green is promised only there. ### 4. Quiz the user Present the proposed breakdown as a numbered list. For each ticket, show: - **Title**: short descriptive name - **Blocked by**: which other tickets (if any) must complete first - **What it delivers**: the end-to-end behaviour this ticket makes work Ask the user: - Does the granularity feel right? (too coarse / too fine) - Are the blocking edges correct: does each ticket only depend on tickets that genuinely gate it? - Should any tickets be merged or split further? Iterate until the user approves the breakdown. ### 5. Publish the tickets to the configured tracker Publish the approved tickets. **How** depends on the tracker `/setup-matt-pocock-skills` configured; the tickets are the same either way, only the shape of the blocking edges changes: - **Local files** → write one file per ticket under `.scratch//issues/-.md`, numbered from `01` in dependency order (blockers first). Each file's "Blocked by" lists the numbers/titles it depends on. Use the per-ticket file template below: one ticket per file, never a single combined file. - **A real issue tracker (GitHub, Linear, …)** → publish one issue per ticket in dependency order (blockers first) so each ticket's blocking edges can reference real identifiers. Use the platform's native blocking / sub-issue relationship where it has one; otherwise set each ticket's "Blocked by" to the blocking issues. Apply the `ready-for-agent` triage label unless instructed otherwise; the tickets are agent-grabbable by construction. Work the **frontier**: any ticket whose blockers are all done. For a purely linear chain that means top to bottom. Do NOT close or modify any parent issue. # : **What to build:** the end-to-end behaviour this ticket makes work, from the user's perspective, not a layer-by-layer implementation list. **Blocked by:** the numbers/titles of the tickets that gate this one, or "None (can start immediately)". **Status:** ready-for-agent - [ ] Acceptance criterion 1 - [ ] Acceptance criterion 2 ## Parent A reference to the parent issue on the tracker (if the source was an existing issue, otherwise omit this section). ## What to build The end-to-end behaviour this ticket makes work, from the user's perspective, not layer-by-layer implementation. ## Acceptance criteria - [ ] Criterion 1 - [ ] Criterion 2 ## Blocked by - A reference to each blocking ticket, or "None (can start immediately)". In either form, avoid specific file paths or code snippets: they go stale fast. Exception: if a prototype produced a snippet that encodes a decision more precisely than prose can (state machine, reducer, schema, type shape), inline it and note briefly that it came from a prototype. Trim to the decision-rich parts, not a working demo, just the important bits. ## Licence of the file above The file above is https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mattpocock/skills/main/skills/engineering/to-tickets/SKILL.md, by Matt Pocock, reproduced without changes. - Source: https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/to-tickets - Copyright: Copyright (c) 2026 Matt Pocock - Licence: MIT, https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mattpocock/skills/main/LICENSE The repo's licence file, verbatim from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mattpocock/skills/main/LICENSE: MIT License Copyright (c) 2026 Matt Pocock Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.