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/user-story

@6a4fbf2
by Dean Petersdeanpeters/product-manager-skills7.1k stars
851

Create user stories with Mike Cohn format and Gherkin acceptance criteria. Use when turning user needs into development-ready work with clear outcomes and testable conditions.

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Use this Skill: https://skilld.dev/gh/deanpeters/product-manager-skills/user-story

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template.md

≈312 tokens on demand. Your agent reads this file only when SKILL.md points to it.

User Story Template

Use this template to write a single user story with Gherkin-style acceptance criteria.

Provenance

Adapted from prompts/user-story-prompt-template.md in the https://github.com/deanpeters/product-manager-prompts repo.

Template

### User Story [ID]:

- **Summary:** [Brief, memorable title focused on user value]

#### Use Case:
- **As a** [user name if available, otherwise persona, otherwise role]
- **I want to** [action the user takes to get to the outcome]
- **so that** [desired outcome for the user]

#### Acceptance Criteria:
- **Scenario:** [Brief, human-readable scenario describing value]
- **Given:** [Initial context or precondition]
- **and Given:** [Additional context or preconditions]
- **and Given:** [Additional context as needed]
- **and Given:** [UI-focused context ensuring the When can happen]
- **and Given:** [Outcomes-focused context ensuring the Then is delivered]
- **When:** [Event that triggers the action]
- **Then:** [Expected outcome aligned to "so that"]

Notes

  • Use only one When and one Then. Multiple When/Then pairs usually mean the story should be split.
  • If you need multiple outcomes, split the story with skills/user-story-splitting/SKILL.md.

Source: SKILL.md on GitHub

Third-party checks

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  • Gen Agent Trust Hub16d

    The skill provides templates and a helper script for creating user stories. A low-severity risk of indirect prompt injection is present because user-supplied feature descriptions are processed to generate content and parameters for a local script without explicit sanitization or delimiters.

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    No alerts

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    Risk: LOW · No issues

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  • ZeroLeaks5mo

    Score: 93/100 · 2 sections analyzed

Provenance

Signed by skilld at 6a4fbf2. This ties the file your Agent reads to that commit on GitHub. It does not review the instructions.

Last checked against GitHub last month.

Activeupdated 3 months ago

Capability

argument-hint
[feature or user need]
type
component
theme
pm-artifacts
Other metadata
intent
Create clear, concise user stories that combine Mike Cohn's user story format with Gherkin-style acceptance criteria. Use this to translate user needs into actionable development work that focuses on outcomes, ensures shared understanding between product and engineering, and provides testable success criteria.
best_for
[
  "Writing user stories with proper acceptance criteria",
  "Converting requirements into development-ready stories",
  "Establishing story quality standards across your team"
]
scenarios
[
  "I need to write a user story for a new notification system in our B2B SaaS app",
  "Convert this PRD requirement into a properly formatted user story with Gherkin acceptance criteria"
]
estimated_time
5-10 min

Topics

  • Testing
  • user-story
  • gherkin
  • acceptance-criteria
  • product-management
  • requirements
  • agile
  • bdd

README badge

README badge for deanpeters/product-manager-skills/user-story

What it does

Generates user stories in Mike Cohn format paired with Gherkin acceptance criteria, translating product requirements into development-ready work with testable success conditions. Use this when turning user needs into backlog items that product, engineering, and QA can align on without ambiguity.

Generated from the current SKILL.md.

Frequently asked

Does this skill work with frameworks like Jira or Azure DevOps?
The skill teaches the Mike Cohn + Gherkin format itself, which is framework-agnostic. You can write stories this way in any tool—Jira, Azure DevOps, linear text files—but the skill doesn't integrate with any platform.
What's the difference between this and just writing a feature spec?
User stories focus on who benefits and why, with testable acceptance criteria. Feature specs are detailed technical documents. This skill positions stories as conversation starters, not locked-in contracts.
Can I use this for technical debt or refactoring work?
No. The skill is explicitly for user-facing value. Technical tasks without a user outcome should use engineering task tickets instead, not the Mike Cohn format.
What if my story has multiple 'When' or 'Then' statements?
That signals the story is too large and should be split into smaller stories. The skill references the user-story-splitting skill for guidance on breaking large stories down.
Do I need to run discovery interviews before using this skill?
Yes. The skill requires context: a validated user problem, a specific persona, and a clear desired outcome. If you're missing these, it recommends writing a problem statement first using the problem-statement skill.

Generated from the current SKILL.md. These answers refresh after source changes.