From Tasks to Ordered GitHub Issues with spec-kit

Where this fits

You're working on a feature in a spec-kit project. The .specify/ directory holds design artifacts and task lists, but your team tracks work in GitHub Issues. Manually converting those tasks into issues—and getting the dependency order right—is tedious and error-prone. This skill automates that conversion, turning your existing task definitions into actionable, dependency-ordered GitHub issues without leaving your agent workflow.

Why agents benefit

• Parses spec-kit structure: The skill reads .specify/ directories, understands the task hierarchy, and respects the project’s own conventions—no generic parsing required.
• Orders issues by dependencies: It doesn't just dump tasks as issues; it analyzes dependency relationships and creates issues in the correct sequence, so your backlog is immediately actionable.
• Respects extension hooks: Before conversion, it checks .specify/extensions.yml for hooks.before_taskstoissues, so you can inject custom preprocessing steps (e.g., validation, enrichment) without breaking the core flow.
• Graceful failure handling: If the extension file is missing or malformed, it skips hook processing silently and continues—no unnecessary interruptions.
• Works with $ARGUMENTS: The skill accepts user input to scope or adjust the conversion, making it flexible for partial feature conversions or specific task subsets.

Practical scenarios

Onboarding a new feature from a spec

Your agent is asked to turn a spec-kit feature spec into issues. It reads the .specify/ directory, identifies all tasks, and creates GitHub issues with proper labels, descriptions, and dependency links—ready for sprint planning.

Keeping issues in sync after spec updates

When the spec changes, you can re-run the skill with $ARGUMENTS to regenerate or update issues, preserving the dependency order and reflecting the latest design decisions.

Integrating with CI/CD pipelines

In a CI job, after a spec merge, the skill runs automatically to generate issues for the new feature. The extension hooks let you add custom logic—like notifying a Slack channel or setting issue priorities—before the conversion completes.

Add it to your agent workflow

Install the skill into your agent environment:

npx skills add dceoy/speckit-agent-skills --skill speckit-taskstoissues

Then invoke it with a task description or arguments. For example, in an agent prompt:

Use speckit-taskstoissues to convert the tasks in .specify/ into GitHub issues for the payment module. Prioritize the checkout flow tasks.

The skill will read the spec, apply any enabled hooks, and produce a set of dependency-ordered issues you can review and push to GitHub.

Compare before adopting

Before committing to this skill, evaluate it against your current workflow. Check the GitHub repo for recent commits and issue activity—are maintainers responsive? Look at the star count (129 at time of writing) and community usage. Compare it with alternatives like manual issue creation or generic task-to-issue converters that lack spec-kit awareness. Also consider whether your project uses the required .specify/ structure; if not, this skill won't fit.

Why it is worth tracking

This skill fills a specific gap for spec-kit users, and its design—especially the extension hook mechanism—shows thoughtful engineering. The steady star growth and active repository signal ongoing maintenance. If your team uses spec-kit, this skill can save hours of repetitive issue grooming. Even if you don't yet, monitoring it gives you a template for building similar converters for other design artifact formats. For a deeper dive, check out its listing on OpenAgentSkill to see community feedback and usage examples.