user-stories

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

### 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, so improve-loop knows 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, or dropped.

Milestones

Each milestone ends with an app the user can use for a day.

1. M1 Core loop: the one thing the app is for, end to end. Data survives a restart.
2. M2 Organize: the main structure, sidebar pages, moving items.
3. M3 Time: dates, Today and Upcoming, recurrence, reminders.
4. M4 Speed: quick-add panel, global shortcut, natural language input, keyboard navigation, search, menu commands.
5. M5 System: menu bar, Share menu, Shortcuts, notifications, CLI.
6. 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.