codyswanngt/confluence-to-tracker

Confluence PRD to Tracker Breakdown

All Atlassian operations in this skill go through lisa:atlassian-access. Do not call MCP tools or acli directly.

Convert a Confluence PRD into a structured ticket hierarchy in the configured destination tracker (JIRA, GitHub Issues, or Linear per .lisa.config.json): Epics > Stories > Sub-tasks. Each sub-task is scoped to exactly one repo and includes an empirical verification plan.

This skill is the Confluence counterpart of lisa:notion-to-tracker. The two skills share the same phases, gates, dry-run contract, and per-ticket validation logic. Only the PRD-side fetch / comment tools differ. When changing workflow logic, change BOTH skills together so the two source vendors stay behaviorally identical.

Modes

This skill supports two modes, controlled by a dry_run flag in $ARGUMENTS:

• dry_run: false (default — full mode): run all phases, write tickets via lisa:tracker-write, run the preservation gate, report.
• dry_run: true (planning + validation only — no writes): run Phases 1, 1.5, 1.6, 2, 3, 4 to plan the hierarchy and draft each ticket spec, then call lisa:tracker-validate (with --spec-only) on every drafted ticket. Aggregate the per-ticket validator reports into a single dry-run report. Skip Phase 5 (sub-task creation), Phase 5.5 (preservation gate), and Phase 6 (results report) — none of those make sense without writes. Return the dry-run report so the caller (e.g. lisa:confluence-prd-intake) can decide whether to proceed.

Dry-run output format is identical to lisa:notion-to-tracker's. Reuse the same fields, including prd_anchor and prd_section. The only difference: prd_anchor is the inline-comment anchor text that lisa:atlassian-access operation: comment-page kind: inline accepts (typically the full selected substring; truncate if it exceeds the substrate's max anchor length and emit null if no resolvable anchor exists).

## confluence-to-tracker dry-run: <PRD title>

### Planned hierarchy
- Epic: <summary>
  prd_section: "<heading text from the PRD that produced this epic>"
  prd_anchor: "<inline-comment anchor text>"   # null if no specific section
  - Story 1.1: <summary>
    prd_section: "<heading or user-story line>"
    prd_anchor: "<anchor>"
    - Sub-task [<repo>]: <summary>
      prd_section: "<heading or AC bullet>"
      prd_anchor: "<anchor>"
    - ...
  - Story 1.2: ...

### Per-ticket validation
- <ticket-id>: PASS | FAIL — <count> failures
  prd_section: "<heading text>"
  prd_anchor: "<anchor>"
  failures:
    - gate: <gate-id>
      category: <category from validator>
      product_relevant: <true|false>
      what: <plain-language description from validator>
      recommendation: <1–3 candidate resolutions from validator>

### Verdict: PASS | FAIL
### Total failures: <n>

The dry-run mode never writes to the destination tracker. It also never modifies the source Confluence page, never re-parents the PRD between lifecycle parents, and never posts comments — that is the orchestrating skill's responsibility (lisa:confluence-prd-intake).

PRD lifecycle is parent-page-based on Confluence

Unlike GitHub and Linear (which use labels for PRD lifecycle state), Confluence encodes PRD lifecycle as parent-page placement: each lifecycle role (draft, ready, in_review, blocked, ticketed, shipped) corresponds to a dedicated parent page in the project's Confluence space, listed in .lisa.config.json under confluence.parents.<role>. A PRD's current state is determined by which of those parents it sits under; a "transition" is a PUT /wiki/api/v2/pages/{id} that swaps parentId.

This skill itself does NOT transition the PRD between lifecycle parents — that is the orchestrating skill's job (lisa:confluence-prd-intake). This skill consumes the PRD content and produces tickets; lifecycle state changes (ready → in_review, in_review → ticketed / blocked) happen in the orchestrator, before and after this skill runs.

Why parent-page-based, not label-based: scoped Atlassian API tokens cannot write Confluence labels via the v1 endpoint, and the v2 Label API group has no POST endpoint at all. Parent-id transitions, by contrast, are first-class in v2 and work with write:page:confluence scope. See config-resolution rule, section "Confluence PRD lifecycle uses parent pages, not labels," for the full rationale.

Hard Rule: All Writes Go Through lisa:tracker-write

Every ticket created by this skill — every epic, story, and sub-task — MUST be created by invoking the lisa:tracker-write skill. Never invoke lisa:atlassian-access write operations (write-ticket, link, comment, transition) directly from this skill or from any sub-agent it spawns.

lisa:tracker-write enforces gates this skill does not:

• 3-audience description (Context / Technical Approach / Acceptance Criteria)
• Gherkin acceptance criteria
• Epic parent validation
• Explicit issue-link discovery (blocks / is blocked by / relates to / duplicates / clones)
• Single-repo scope check on Bug / Task / Sub-task / Improvement
• Sign-in account and target environment recorded in description
• Post-create verification

Bypassing lisa:tracker-write produces thin tickets that the rest of the lifecycle (triage, ticket-verify, journey, evidence) treats as broken. Read operations on Atlassian (ticket reads, JQL search, Confluence page reads, comment fetches) are still performed in this skill — but ONLY via lisa:atlassian-access (operation: read-ticket | search-issues | read-page | search-pages | list-sites), never via direct MCP tool calls or acli.

Input

A Confluence PRD page URL or page ID. The PRD is expected to have:

• A main page with context, problems, and child pages for each Epic
• Epic child pages with User Stories and functional/non-functional requirements
• Page comments (footer + inline) with engineering notes and product decisions

URL parsing — Confluence URLs come in two common shapes:

https://<host>/wiki/spaces/<SPACE>/pages/<PAGE-ID>/<slug>
https://<host>/wiki/spaces/<SPACE>/pages/<PAGE-ID>

Extract <PAGE-ID> (the numeric segment after /pages/). If only a space URL is provided (/wiki/spaces/<SPACE> with no /pages/...), stop and report — single-PRD mode requires a specific page. The caller wanted lisa:confluence-prd-intake (batch mode).

Configuration

This skill reads project configuration from .lisa.config.json (with .lisa.config.local.json overriding per key) and operational E2E test config from environment variables. See the config-resolution rule for the full schema.

From .lisa.config.json

This skill is a PRD source (Confluence); destination tracker resolution is handled by lisa:tracker-write and lisa:tracker-validate internally — this skill does NOT read tracker directly. The relevant config for the source side:

| Field | Purpose | Required when | |-------|---------|---------------| | atlassian.cloudId | Atlassian Cloud site UUID for Confluence MCP calls | always | | confluence.spaceKey | Confluence space hosting PRDs | invoked without an explicit page URL (batch / arg-less mode) and confluence.parentPageId is unset | | confluence.parentPageId | Confluence parent page under which PRDs live | invoked without an explicit page URL (batch / arg-less mode) and confluence.spaceKey is unset |

From environment variables (E2E test config — operational, not tracker)

| Variable | Purpose | Example | |----------|---------|---------| | E2E_TEST_PHONE | Test user phone number for verification plans | 0000000099 | | E2E_TEST_OTP | Test user OTP code | 555555 | | E2E_TEST_ORG | Test organization name | Arsenal | | E2E_BASE_URL | Frontend base URL for Playwright tests | https://dev.example.io/ | | E2E_GRAPHQL_URL | GraphQL API URL for curl verification | https://gql.dev.example.io/graphql |

If env vars are not available, ask the user to provide them explicitly before proceeding. Do not retrieve credentials from repository files or local agent settings.

Workflow

Phase 1: Fetch & Analyze the PRD

1. Confirm the configured Atlassian site by invoking lisa:atlassian-access operation: list-sites (it enforces connection match against .lisa.config.json).
2. Fetch the main PRD page by invoking lisa:atlassian-access operation: read-page id: <PAGE-ID>. Capture body, parent page id (used by lisa:confluence-prd-intake to determine the PRD's lifecycle state — see "PRD lifecycle is parent-page-based" below), and child page references.
3. Identify all Epic child pages by invoking lisa:atlassian-access operation: read-page-descendants id: <PAGE-ID> (one level deep first; recurse if the PRD nests epics under a "Specs" parent). If atlassian-access does not yet expose read-page-descendants, request its addition (see report at bottom).
4. Fetch all Epic pages in parallel via lisa:atlassian-access operation: read-page id: <EPIC-PAGE-ID>.
5. Fetch full comments for the main page and every epic page in parallel via lisa:atlassian-access:
   • operation: read-page-comments id: <PAGE-ID> kind: footer — page-level threaded comments (equivalent to Notion's page-level discussions)
   • operation: read-page-comments id: <PAGE-ID> kind: inline — block-anchored comments tied to specific text spans
   • For any comment with replies, walk the tree via operation: read-comment-children id: <COMMENT-ID> until exhausted (If any of these read-comment operations is not yet in atlassian-access's dispatch table, request their addition — they are intentionally listed here so the access skill can be extended.)
6. Synthesize decisions and blockers from the PRD content + all comments:
   • Decisions already confirmed by the team (look for agreement in comment threads)
   • Open questions that need product/engineering input
   • Engineering comments (prefixed with "Engineering:" or wrench emoji) that identify technical constraints
   • Cross-PRD dependencies (references to other features or shared infrastructure)

Phase 1.5: Extract Source Artifacts

PRDs typically reference external design, UX, and data artifacts (Figma files, Lovable prototypes, Loom walkthroughs, screenshots, example payloads, peer Confluence pages). These MUST be preserved onto the resulting tickets — otherwise developers picking up a ticket lose the source of truth. This is the failure mode this step exists to prevent.

1. Scan the PRD main page, all Epic child pages, and every fetched comment thread for:

   • URLs to design/prototype tools (Figma, FigJam, Figma Make, Lovable, Framer, Penpot)
   • URLs to recording/walkthrough tools (Loom, YouTube, Vimeo, Descript)
   • URLs to collaborative docs (Google Docs/Slides/Sheets, peer Confluence pages, Notion peer pages)
   • URLs to code sandboxes (CodeSandbox, StackBlitz, Replit, GitHub permalinks/gists)
   • URLs to diagramming tools (Miro, Mural, Excalidraw, Mermaid Live, draw.io, Lucid)
   • URLs to data/observability tools (Grafana, Datadog, Sentry, Metabase, Looker)
   • Embedded images and file attachments on the page itself
   • Fenced code blocks with example data (JSON, SQL, GraphQL, cURL request/response)

2. Classify each artifact and apply taxonomy rules by invoking the lisa:tracker-source-artifacts skill. That skill is the single source of truth for: domains (ui-design / ux-flow / data / ops / reference), per-tool classification rules (Figma /proto/ vs design, Lovable as ux-flow, Loom, screenshots), and coverage smells. Do not restate the rules here — invoke the skill so any drift in the rules propagates uniformly.

3. Build an artifacts map keyed by domain. Each entry: { url, title, domain, source_page, source_page_url, classification_reason }. The classification_reason makes disambiguation auditable. The source_page lets you trace each reference back to where it appeared in the PRD.

4. Surface coverage smells as defined in lisa:tracker-source-artifacts §5. Record any detected smells on the epic.

Phase 1.6: Source Precedence & Conflict Resolution

Source precedence rules and cross-axis conflict handling are defined in lisa:tracker-source-artifacts §3 and §4. Apply them during ticket synthesis: every conflict between artifacts must be recorded under ## Open Questions on the affected ticket, never silently reconciled.

The existing-component reuse expectation is defined in lisa:tracker-source-artifacts §7. Encode it on every UI-touching story.

Phase 2: Codebase + Live Product Research

Identical to lisa:notion-to-tracker Phase 2. Two complementary inputs ground PRD analysis: the code (what's there to reuse / extend) and the live product (what users see today). Skipping either produces tickets that misjudge the change.

2a. Codebase research. If the session doesn't already have codebase context, explore the repos to understand what exists. Use Explore agents for repos not yet examined.

2b. Live product walkthrough. If the PRD touches existing user-facing surfaces, invoke the lisa:product-walkthrough skill against E2E_BASE_URL using the test user from config.

Skip 2b only when the work is purely backend with no user-visible surface, or affects a screen that does not yet exist in dev/prod.

Walkthrough findings are attached to the originating Confluence PRD as a footer comment (Confluence has no general "page-level discussion attached to a heading" — footer comments are the page-level equivalent), via lisa:atlassian-access operation: comment-page id: <PAGE-ID> kind: footer body: "...". Title the comment "Current product walkthrough — <route>". Inherited onto the resulting epic / stories under a ## Current Product subsection.

Phase 3: Create Epics

Mode guard: In dry_run: true mode, do not invoke lisa:tracker-write in this phase. Instead, draft the epic spec (summary, description_body, artifacts) and validate it with lisa:tracker-validate --spec-only. Record the drafted spec (including a placeholder epic key like DRY-RUN-EPIC-1) for Phase 4 to use as parent references. In dry_run: false mode (default), proceed as described below.

For each PRD epic, invoke the lisa:tracker-write skill (do not invoke lisa:atlassian-access write operations directly). Pass it everything it needs to enforce its quality gates:

• project_key: resolved by lisa:tracker-write from .lisa.config.json
• issue_type: Epic
• summary: epic title from the PRD
• description_body: a draft of the 3-audience description containing:
  • Context / Business Value: epic summary from the PRD, originating Confluence URL, business outcome
  • Technical Approach: cross-cutting integration points and constraints surfaced in Phase 2 codebase research
  • List of user stories the epic contains
  • Key decisions from comments (with attribution)
  • Blockers and open questions
  • Dependencies on other epics or PRDs
  • A Source Artifacts section listing every artifact extracted in Phase 1.5 (grouped by domain)
• artifacts: the full Phase 1.5 artifact list — every artifact, regardless of domain. The epic is the canonical hub. No filtering at the epic level.
• priority, labels, components, fix_version: as appropriate

Leaf-only build-ready (leaf-only-lifecycle): an Epic is a container, not a leaf work unit. Do NOT mark it build-ready — lisa:tracker-write must not be passed status:ready for an Epic, and the Epic's lifecycle state rolls up from its children. The build-ready label is applied only in Phase 5.

Capture the returned epic key — Phase 4 needs it as the parent for stories.

Phase 4: Create Stories

Mode guard: In dry_run: true mode, do not invoke lisa:tracker-write in this phase. Instead, draft each story spec and validate it with lisa:tracker-validate --spec-only. Use placeholder keys (e.g. DRY-RUN-STORY-1.1) for any downstream references. In dry_run: false mode (default), proceed as described below.

For each Epic, plan two kinds of stories:

• One "X.0 Setup" story for data model and infrastructure prerequisites
• One story per user story from the PRD (numbered to match the PRD)

Story naming convention: Prefix the summary with a short code derived from the PRD title (e.g., [CU-1.1] for "Contract Upload").

For each story, invoke lisa:tracker-write with:

• project_key: resolved by lisa:tracker-write from .lisa.config.json
• issue_type: Story
• epic_parent: the Epic key captured in Phase 3 (mandatory)
• summary: prefixed per the naming convention above
• description_body: 3-audience description as in lisa:notion-to-tracker Phase 4
• artifacts: the Phase 1.5 artifacts filtered by domain per the inheritance table below

| Story type | Inherits domains | |------------|------------------| | Frontend / UI | ui-design, ux-flow, reference | | Backend / API / data model | data, reference | | Infrastructure | ops, reference | | Mixed / setup ("X.0") | All domains |

Leaf-only build-ready (leaf-only-lifecycle): a Story is a container (it has child Sub-tasks), not a leaf work unit. Do NOT mark it build-ready — never pass status:ready to lisa:tracker-write for a Story. Its lifecycle state rolls up from its Sub-tasks. The build-ready label is applied only in Phase 5.

Capture each returned story key — Phase 5 needs it as the parent for sub-tasks.

Phase 5: Create Sub-tasks

Auto-split cross-repo work before delegation. For each candidate sub-task, apply lisa:task-decomposition step 1.5: if the work touches more than one repo, split it into one sub-task per repo under the same parent Story (e.g., [backend-api] Add field + [mobile-app] Display field), and encode the producer-before-consumer ordering via dependencies. Work units that may span repos (Epic, Story, Spike) stay as planned; work units that must be single-repo (Bug, Task, Sub-task, Improvement) are split now. Splitting is this skill's responsibility — the validator's S10 gate is product_relevant: false because cross-repo failures are decomposition errors caught here, not product questions sent back to the PRD.

S10 hard gate repair loop. Dry-run validation is not advisory. Before any Phase 5 write, every planned leaf spec MUST pass lisa:tracker-validate --spec-only for S10 Single-repo scope. If any Bug / Task / Sub-task / Improvement fails S10 (missing Repository, more than one repo, or cross-repo AC), stop the write path, auto-split or restamp the spec using lisa:task-decomposition step 1.5, add the repo bracket and ## Repository / h2. Repository section, then re-run lisa:tracker-validate --spec-only. If S10 still fails after repair, abort the ticket write and record an internal Error in the dry-run report; do not create the ticket, do not bypass with direct vendor writes, and do not surface the product_relevant: false failure as a product clarification.

Delegate sub-task creation to parallel agents (one per epic or batch of stories) for efficiency. Every spawned agent must invoke lisa:tracker-write for each sub-task — no agent may invoke lisa:atlassian-access write operations directly.

Each sub-task MUST:

1. Be scoped to exactly ONE repo — indicated in brackets in the summary: [repo-name] and in the description's ## Repository / h2. Repository section
2. Include an Empirical Verification Plan — real user-like verification, NOT unit tests, linting, or typechecking

Leaf-only build-ready (leaf-only-lifecycle): Sub-tasks are the leaf work units of the decomposition — they are the ONLY items in the hierarchy that receive the build-ready label. lisa:tracker-write applies status:ready here so downstream build intake (lisa:tracker-build-intake) claims the leaves and never the Epic or Stories. Apply status:ready to each Sub-task; never to its parent Story or Epic (Phases 3–4). lisa:tracker-write enforces the same invariant on the write side, so a Sub-task split into per-repo children (the cross-repo case above) carries build-ready on the children, not on any intermediate parent that gains child work.

Sub-tasks inherit their parent story's artifacts by reference (the parent link). Do not pass the same artifact list to every sub-task.

Phase 5.5: Artifact Preservation Gate (mandatory)

Run the preservation gate defined in lisa:tracker-source-artifacts §8 against the artifacts extracted in Phase 1.5 and the tickets just created. Do NOT restate or modify the gate logic here — invoke the rules from lisa:tracker-source-artifacts.

To run the gate, this skill must:

1. Pull the remote links of every epic and story created in this run via lisa:tracker-read (vendor-neutral; dispatches to jira-read-ticket or github-read-issue).
2. Apply the §8 preservation matrix and verdict rules.
3. If the gate fails: list each dropped/misrouted artifact and either re-attach via lisa:tracker-write (UPDATE mode) or stop and ask the human.
4. If the gate passes: print the matrix compactly and proceed to Phase 6.

This gate is not optional.

Phase 6: Report Results

After all tickets are created, present a summary table to the user:

• All Epics with keys and URLs
• All Stories grouped by Epic
• All Sub-tasks grouped by Story with repo tags
• Repo distribution
• Artifact Preservation Matrix
• Blockers list with recommendations and alternatives
• Cross-PRD dependencies

Phase 7: PRD Back-link

Mode guard: In dry_run: true mode, skip this phase entirely — no tickets exist to link.

After Phase 6, invoke the lisa:prd-backlink skill to write a ## Tickets section back into the source Confluence PRD page. The section becomes the canonical anchor for the Debrief flow once the initiative ships.

Invoke lisa:prd-backlink with:

• source_type: "confluence"
• source_ref: the original Confluence page URL
• tickets: the full list created in Phases 3–5, each entry as { key, title, type, url, parent_key }

If lisa:prd-backlink fails (page permission denied, Confluence unreachable), surface the error in the Phase 6 report rather than aborting — the tickets are already created. Recommend the user re-run lisa:prd-backlink standalone once the source is reachable.

Handling Ambiguities and Blockers

When you encounter something the PRD + comments + codebase can't resolve:

1. Don't guess — mark the ticket with a BLOCKER section
2. Include your recommendation with rationale
3. List 2-3 alternatives so the user/product can choose
4. State what's needed to unblock

Agent Prompt Template for Sub-task Creation

When delegating to agents, provide this context. The "MUST invoke lisa:tracker-write" instruction is load-bearing — do not edit it out when adapting this template.

Create sub-tasks in the [PROJECT] project.

CRITICAL: For each sub-task, invoke the `lisa:tracker-write` skill via the Skill tool.
Do NOT invoke `lisa:atlassian-access` write operations (write-ticket / link / comment /
transition) directly. The `lisa:tracker-write` skill enforces required quality gates
(Gherkin acceptance criteria, 3-audience description, single-repo scope,
sign-in/environment fields, post-create verification). Bypassing it produces broken
tickets that downstream skills (triage, journey, evidence) cannot use.

For each sub-task, invoke `lisa:tracker-write` with:
- issue_type: "Sub-task"
- parent: the parent story key
- project_key: [PROJECT]
- summary: prefixed with the repo in brackets, e.g. "[backend-api] Add audit log table"
- description_body: a 3-section draft (Context / Technical Approach / Acceptance Criteria) plus `h2. Repository` naming exactly one repo
- gherkin_acceptance_criteria: derived from the story's functional requirements
- sign_in_account: [test user credentials from config — name + role + how to obtain]
- target_environment: "dev"
- empirical_verification_plan: real user-like verification (curl + auth token,
  Playwright browser flow, CLI check after deploy) using the test credentials.
  NOT unit tests, linting, or typechecking.

Each sub-task must:
1. Be scoped to ONE repo only — repo named in brackets in the summary and in `h2. Repository`
2. Include the Empirical Verification Plan in the description
3. Be created via `lisa:tracker-write`, not via direct `lisa:atlassian-access` write operations

If `lisa:tracker-write` rejects a sub-task, fix the input and re-invoke. Do NOT fall back
to a direct `lisa:atlassian-access` `operation: write-ticket` call to bypass the gate.

Test user info: [credentials from config]

[Then list all sub-tasks grouped by parent story with details]

Cross-PRD Shared Infrastructure

Track tickets that are shared across PRDs to avoid duplication. When a sub-task overlaps with an existing ticket, reference it instead of creating a duplicate. Search JIRA for existing tickets in the project before creating new ones for shared infrastructure.

Confluence-specific notes

• Page bodies come back from getConfluencePage as either Atlassian Document Format (ADF / storage format) or rendered HTML depending on flags. Treat headings (<h1>–<h3>) as section markers for prd_section. For ADF, walk the document tree.
• Inline comment anchors: prd_anchor is the inline-comment selection text (the exact substring createConfluenceInlineComment will match). If the section is too long for an inline anchor (Confluence has a practical upper bound on selection length), pick the first sentence of the section. If the section has no stable anchor (e.g., a generated table cell), set prd_anchor: null and the caller will fall back to a footer comment.
• Comment threading: Confluence has separate footer and inline comment streams. When fetching comments in Phase 1, merge both into the analysis — they are equally authoritative for capturing decisions and engineering notes.