Linear Project to Tickets

Convert a Linear project into actionable tickets. This skill requires Linear MCP.

Requirements

• •Linear MCP must be configured and authenticated
• •A Linear project must exist (use linear-project-creation first if needed)

Philosophy

"The project defines the END STATE. The agent/developer decides HOW to get there."

Focus on:

• •What needs to exist when done
• •How to verify it's correct
• •NOT implementation details

Process

Step 1: Fetch Linear Project

Ask the user for the Linear project ID, then:

1. •Fetch the project via Linear MCP
2. •Read the project description
3. •Understand the team and project structure
4. •Get available labels (especially release labels)

Step 2: Identify Target Release

Ask the user which release these tickets should be tagged with (e.g., "Dynamo 0.9.0").

Linear uses nested labels - release labels are under parent groups:

• •Example: "Dynamo Releases > Dynamo 0.9.0"
• •Fetch available labels from the team and look for the release label group first

Step 3: Extract Tickets

From the project description, identify discrete units of work:

• •Each task = one Linear issue
• •Each task should have clear verification criteria
• •Tasks ordered by dependency (blockers first)

Step 4: Create Linear Issues

For each ticket, create a Linear issue with:

Title: Concise action (e.g., "Implement per-user rate limiting")

Description:

## What
[One sentence on what this accomplishes]

## Acceptance Criteria
- [ ] [Verification step 1]
- [ ] [Verification step 2]

## Notes
[Any context, dependencies, or constraints]

Metadata:

• •Link to parent project
• •Add release label (nested: "Dynamo Releases > Dynamo 0.9.0")
• •Set labels based on category (setup, implementation, integration, testing)
• •Add blocking relationships if dependencies exist

Step 5: Confirm with User

Before creating tickets:

1. •Show the list of issues to be created (title + acceptance criteria)
2. •Show the release label that will be applied
3. •Ask for confirmation
4. •Create all issues via Linear MCP
5. •Return the issue IDs/URLs

Guidelines

• •Granularity: Tickets should take 1-4 hours, not days
• •Independence: Minimize coupling between tickets where possible
• •Verification focus: If you can't verify it, the ticket isn't well-defined
• •No implementation details: Don't specify how to code it, specify what it should do
• •Always tag release: Every ticket must have a release label

Example

Project description snippet:

"Add rate limiting to the API. Should limit to 100 requests per minute per user."

Created Linear issue:

• •Title: Implement per-user rate limiting
• •Labels: Dynamo Releases > Dynamo 0.7.1, implementation
• •Description:
  code

  ## What
  Add rate limiting middleware that restricts API calls to 100/min per authenticated user
  
  ## Acceptance Criteria
  - [ ] Make 100 requests in <60s with same user token -> all succeed
  - [ ] Make 101st request -> returns 429 Too Many Requests
  - [ ] Wait 60s, make another request -> succeeds
  - [ ] Different user token is not affected by first user's limit