Maps and decision tickets

This page orients. The canonical contract agents load is skills/chart-work/references/map.md.

The map gives low-resolution orientation; each ticket owns its question, evidence, and decision.

Map

A useful map contains destination, boundaries, decisions, Fog, shaping handoffs, delivery-ready branches, and spawned work. It links to canonical tickets instead of repeating their evidence. When the map originates from guide-me, the approved plain-language summary sits at the top as a ## TLDR, so the map opens with what the work solves before any planning vocabulary.

Tickets

Each ticket states one question, why it matters, evidence needed, and dependencies. Evidence paths are:

• repository research or measurements;
• a prototype;
• a developer product decision;
• a prerequisite task.

Open, unblocked, unclaimed tickets form the frontier. Independent tickets can run in parallel, with each worker writing its own canonical ticket before the map is reconciled.

A resolved ticket records decision, evidence, rejected alternatives, consequence, new work, and open risks. Developer preferences must come from the developer.

From decisions to delivery readiness

When a branch becomes bounded enough for one shape-work session, create or reuse one handoff with stable identity (origin map, branch key). Link settled decisions, evidence, prototypes, and remaining questions. Search before creating so retries stay idempotent. This marks the branch as shaping, not delivery-ready.

Shape-work later creates or reuses the implementation issues and reconciles their links and ready or blocked frontier into the map. Only then does the branch become delivery-ready. A selected branch that has only a shaping handoff keeps the map open.

Planning writes are authorized by the charting request. Product implementation requires a later implementation request.