A lightweight Scrum + Kanban convention for AI-assisted projects. No tools, no lock-in — just markdown files and directory naming.
Designed to layer on top of agent-handoff: handoffs capture what happened in this session, scrum captures what work exists, what state it's in, and what we learned.
your-project/
├── AGENT.md # Handoff + scrum instructions (your AI reads this)
├── HANDOFF/ # Session journals (chronological) ← agent-handoff
├── DOC/ # Reference docs (persistent, by topic) ← agent-handoff
├── SPRINTS/ # One file per sprint: goal, stories, demo, acceptance
├── EPICS/ # One subdir per epic with state-prefixed story files
│ └── epic{YYMMDD}-{slug}/
│ ├── epic-definition.md
│ ├── 0-backlog-{task}.md
│ ├── 1-in-progress-{task}.md
│ └── 2-finished-{task}.md
└── LEARNINGS/ # Per-sprint retros
Pick the parts you need:
- Sprints only —
SPRINTS/+LEARNINGS/. Good for small linear projects. (Pattern:ddev-drush-tui,ddev-xdebug-tui.) - Epics + Kanban states —
EPICS/with0-backlog-,1-in-progress-,2-finished-filename prefixes. Good for larger or multi-track work. (Pattern:theme_machine.) - Both — Sprints set the cadence; epics organize the long-lived work that crosses sprint boundaries.
The state prefix in story filenames makes workflow visible at a glance in any file listing — moving a story between states is just a rename.
- Copy
AGENT.mdinto your project root (or merge into an existingAGENT.md). - Copy whichever directories you want from
template/. - Tell your agent to read
AGENT.md.
- No tools required — Just markdown files and directory names
- State is visible in
ls—0-backlog-*,1-in-progress-*,2-finished-*self-sort - Renames = state transitions — No metadata file to keep in sync
- Pairs with handoffs — Session journals reference the epic/story they touched
- Field-tested — Extracted from real projects
Extracted from patterns that emerged organically across several projects — most fully developed in Theme Machine, with simpler variants in ddev-drush-tui and ddev-xdebug-tui.
MIT — Use it however you want.