task-decomposition-expert

# fetches the source and writes it to:
.claude/agents/task-decomposition-expert.md

What it is

Use this agent when you need to break down a complex, multi-step goal into an actionable work breakdown structure with dependencies, parallelism opportunities, effort estimates, and a clear handoff plan to specialist agents. Specifically:\n\n\nContext: A team wants to migrate a monolithic Rails app to a microservices architecture but the scope feels overwhelming and they don't know where to start.\nuser: "We need to migrate our Rails monolith to microservices. It has 12 bounded contexts, a shared Postgres database, and we can't have more than 4 hours of downtime total."\nassistant: "I'll gather your constraints and success criteria first, then produce a full work breakdown: I'll identify the 3–4 highest-risk extraction candidates, map all inter-service data dependencies, design a strangler-fig migration sequence with parallel tracks for each service, define validation checkpoints at each phase, and specify which specialist agents should handle each workstream (backend-developer, database-architect, devops-engineer, security-auditor)."\n\nUse the task-decomposition-expert when the user has a large, ambiguous project with multiple capabilities required and needs a structured plan before execution begins. This agent produces the roadmap; specialist agents execute the work.\n\n\n\n\nContext: A startup needs to launch an AI-powered document processing product in 8 weeks with a team of 3 engineers.\nuser: "We need to ship a document ingestion and Q&A product in 8 weeks. We have 3 engineers. What do we build first?"\nassistant: "I'll start by clarifying your non-negotiables — document types, latency targets, and must-have features for launch. Then I'll produce a prioritized WBS: identify the critical path (ingestion pipeline → embedding → retrieval → API), map tasks that can run in parallel (frontend, auth, monitoring), assign effort estimates using the 8/80-hour rule, and flag the top 3 risks with mitigation tasks. Each workstream maps to a specialist agent for execution."\n\nInvoke the task-decomposition-expert when a project has real time and resource constraints and the team needs a sequenced, parallel-aware plan with risk flags before writing any code.\n\n\n\n\nContext: An engineering manager needs to understand how to coordinate an AI agent system where multiple sub-agents collaborate on a research and report-writing pipeline.\nuser: "I want to build a multi-agent system that researches a topic, synthesizes findings, and produces a formatted report. How do I structure this?"\nassistant: "I'll map the full workflow: define the task graph (research → synthesis → formatting → review), identify which steps can run in parallel (multiple research sub-agents), specify the data contracts between each agent, design error handling and retry logic for flaky search steps, and recommend which existing specialist agents fit each role. You'll get a dependency diagram, effort estimates per node, and a recommended orchestration pattern."\n\nUse the task-decomposition-expert when designing multi-agent or multi-step automation pipelines where the orchestration structure itself is the primary deliverable.\n\n

When to use it

Use this agent when you need to break down a complex, multi-step goal into an actionable work breakdown structure with dependencies, parallelism opportunities, effort estimates, and a clear handoff plan to specialist agents. Specifically:\n\n\nContext: A team wants to migrate a monolithic Rails app to a microservices architecture but the scope feels overwhelming and they don't know where to start.\nuser: "We need to migrate our Rails monolith to microservices. It has 12 bounded contexts, a shared Postgres database, and we can't have more than 4 hours of downtime total."\nassistant: "I'll gather your constraints and success criteria first, then produce a full work breakdown: I'll identify the 3–4 highest-risk extraction candidates, map all inter-service data dependencies, design a strangler-fig migration sequence with parallel tracks for each service, define validation checkpoints at each phase, and specify which specialist agents should handle each workstream (backend-developer, database-architect, devops-engineer, security-auditor)."\n\nUse the task-decomposition-expert when the user has a large, ambiguous project with multiple capabilities required and needs a structured plan before execution begins. This agent produces the roadmap; specialist agents execute the work.\n\n\n\n\nContext: A startup needs to launch an AI-powered document processing product in 8 weeks with a team of 3 engineers.\nuser: "We need to ship a document ingestion and Q&A product in 8 weeks. We have 3 engineers. What do we build first?"\nassistant: "I'll start by clarifying your non-negotiables — document types, latency targets, and must-have features for launch. Then I'll produce a prioritized WBS: identify the critical path (ingestion pipeline → embedding → retrieval → API), map tasks that can run in parallel (frontend, auth, monitoring), assign effort estimates using the 8/80-hour rule, and flag the top 3 risks with mitigation tasks. Each workstream maps to a specialist agent for execution."\n\nInvoke the task-decomposition-expert when a project has real time and resource constraints and the team needs a sequenced, parallel-aware plan with risk flags before writing any code.\n\n\n\n\nContext: An engineering manager needs to understand how to coordinate an AI agent system where multiple sub-agents collaborate on a research and report-writing pipeline.\nuser: "I want to build a multi-agent system that researches a topic, synthesizes findings, and produces a formatted report. How do I structure this?"\nassistant: "I'll map the full workflow: define the task graph (research → synthesis → formatting → review), identify which steps can run in parallel (multiple research sub-agents), specify the data contracts between each agent, design error handling and retry logic for flaky search steps, and recommend which existing specialist agents fit each role. You'll get a dependency diagram, effort estimates per node, and a recommended orchestration pattern."\n\nUse the task-decomposition-expert when designing multi-agent or multi-step automation pipelines where the orchestration structure itself is the primary deliverable.\n\n

How to install / invoke

# Copy the agent definition into your project's .claude/agents/
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/davila7/claude-code-templates/main/cli-tool/components/agents/ai-specialists/task-decomposition-expert.md -o .claude/agents/task-decomposition-expert.md

Notes

Extracted from davila7/claude-code-templates, ai-specialists category.