Implementation issues

This page orients. The canonical contract agents load is skills/shape-work/references/implementation-issues.md.

Research, grilling, and prototypes provide decision evidence. The durable output of shaping is one or more implementation-ready issues on the configured planning surface.

Shape-work is not complete, and a selected branch is not delivery-ready, until those issues exist. Parked and rejected branches need no implementation issue.

Required issue contract

Every issue has a stable (origin, unit key) identity and records:

• explicit ready or blocked status using project conventions;
• one coherent observable outcome;
• boundaries and non-goals;
• acceptance examples;
• ground truth that can verify the outcome;
• dependencies and their current state;
• linked evidence and settled decisions;
• the requested delivery target;
• open risks without unresolved product choices.

Retries search before creating and update existing issues. Dependencies determine the ready or blocked frontier; they do not determine the execution workflow.

The developer chooses execution

Any ready issue can be delivered individually with deliver-work, including one issue from a larger sequential graph. batch-work consumes an existing dependency-mapped issue set only when the developer explicitly requests integrated parallel execution. Several issues never imply batch-work by themselves.

Creating issues is a planning write. It does not authorize product code changes, batch execution, merge, deployment, or other delivery effects.