task-breakdown

Assign each artifact to a phase using a deterministic kind mapping: contracts and mocked controllers first, then vertical behavior slices, then integration and QA. Topo-sort within each phase using dependency edges to compute waves and the critical path.

Use the full phase-lane overlay when a plan produces ten or more artifacts or crosses three or more bounded contexts. For smaller plans of three to seven artifacts in one or two contexts, a simple inline topological sort is sufficient and cheaper.

A safe handoff contains frozen inputs with exact identifiers from the contract phase, deliverables mapped to acceptance criteria, scope fences marking done and out-of-scope work, exact gate commands, and explicit discretion areas. Vague handoffs cause agents to re-derive shapes and drift.

Declaring controllers with mocked responses in the contract phase freezes the API shape and lets the SDK regenerate, so frontend and backend slices can fan out in parallel without waiting on each other. The mock is replaced with the real use case in a later phase.

Do not use it for deriving artifacts from a spec, writing TDD steps, implementing code, or making architectural decisions. It only owns the ordering layer and is skipped entirely for small plans below the artifact and context thresholds.