Using the Work Breakdown Feature

The work breakdown feature gives your team a structured view of all the development work required to deliver a feature. Instead of a vague description, you get a clear hierarchy of deliverable pieces that engineers can act on and track.

Understanding the Hierarchy

Agiloop organizes feature work into three levels:

• Feature — The top-level item representing the full piece of functionality you are building.
• Stories — User-facing slices of work within a feature. Each story describes a meaningful outcome for an end user or stakeholder. Stories are the primary unit of planning and estimation.
• Tasks — Concrete implementation steps that belong to a story. Tasks represent the specific technical work a developer carries out to complete the story.

This structure keeps the "what" (stories) clearly separated from the "how" (tasks), making it easier to communicate across roles.

Viewing the Work Breakdown Tab

The work breakdown is available on any feature that has been through the AI interview or has had specs generated.

1. Open a project and select a feature from the feature list.
2. Inside the feature detail view, navigate to the Work Breakdown tab.
3. You will see the list of stories, each expandable to reveal its tasks.

Note: If the work breakdown tab appears empty, the feature may not yet have a generated specification. Run the AI interview or use the spec refresh option to generate one.

Editing Stories and Tasks

Editing a Story

1. Click on the story title or its edit control to open the story editor.
2. Update the description to clarify the user-facing outcome the story delivers.
3. Edit the acceptance criteria to define the specific conditions that must be true for the story to be considered complete. Clear acceptance criteria help both engineers and reviewers understand when work is done.
4. Save your changes.

Editing a Task

1. Expand a story to reveal its tasks.
2. Click on the task you want to edit.
3. Update the description to reflect the precise implementation step needed.
4. Save your changes.

Note: Acceptance criteria live at the story level, not the task level. Tasks describe work steps; stories describe outcomes.

Adding Stories and Tasks

Adding a Story

1. Scroll to the bottom of the story list within the work breakdown tab.
2. Use the Add Story control to create a new story.
3. Enter a title and description for the story.
4. Optionally add acceptance criteria before saving.

Adding a Task

1. Expand the story you want to add a task to.
2. Use the Add Task control at the bottom of that story's task list.
3. Enter a description for the task and save.

Removing Stories and Tasks

• To remove a story, open the story's options menu and select the delete or remove action. Removing a story also removes all tasks nested within it.
• To remove a task, open the task's options menu and select the delete or remove action.

Note: Deletions are immediate. If you accidentally remove a story or task, you can regenerate the work breakdown from the spec refresh option, though this will replace any manual edits you have made.

Reordering via Drag and Drop

You can change the order of stories and tasks using drag and drop.

• To reorder a story, grab the drag handle on the left side of the story row and drag it to the desired position in the list.
• To reorder a task, expand the parent story, then grab the task's drag handle and drag it to a new position within that story.

The order you set here is reflected in how the work is presented to the AI during implementation.

Connecting Work Breakdown to Implementation

The work breakdown is not just documentation — it directly drives the AI build process.

When you move a feature to the Implement stage, Agiloop uses the stories and tasks in the work breakdown as the blueprint for code generation. The AI agent works through the stories and tasks in order, generating code that corresponds to each piece of described work.

Because of this connection, investing time in clear story descriptions and acceptance criteria before building pays off. The more precise your work breakdown, the more accurately the generated code matches your intent.

Story points displayed alongside stories represent the estimated effort required and correspond to the AI credits consumed during the build.

Tips for a Strong Work Breakdown

• Keep story descriptions focused on user outcomes, not implementation details — save those for tasks.
• Write acceptance criteria as verifiable conditions ("User can filter the list by status") rather than vague goals ("Filtering works").
• If the AI-generated breakdown does not match your team's approach, edit freely before triggering a build — changes are reflected immediately.
• Use the spec refresh option if you need to regenerate stories and tasks after significantly updating the feature specification through a new interview.

Related Articles

• Understanding and Editing Feature Specifications

• Feature Dependencies

• Understanding Story Point Estimation in Agiloop

• How to Define Features Using Agiloop's AI Interview

• How to Build a Feature with Agiloop's AI Code Generation

• Tracking Implementation Status and Using the Kanban Board