Most project management guides assume you already have stories. This one starts earlier — before the first story exists, before the sprint is created. All you have is an idea.
This guide follows two characters: Deploy Dino, a CTO launching a brand-new product, and Story Sprout, a PM who needs to turn a feature request into a sprint-ready story before tomorrow's planning session. Both start with nothing but words.
Deploy Dino is building Zephyr — a real-time collaborative whiteboard for distributed engineering teams. Think Miro, but purpose-built for async standups and technical diagramming. The Silverile project exists but it's empty. No stories, no sprint, no team. Deploy Dino opens Claude with a product brief and starts talking.
I found 2 projects in your account:
Which would you like to set as your default?
Connected. Now Deploy Dino pastes the full product brief — description, core features, and tech stack — and asks Monty to break it down.
Here's a proposed v1 breakdown for Zephyr. Review before I create anything:
| # | Story | Pts |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Auth0 authentication — Google + GitHub OAuth, session management, logout | 5 |
| 2 | Infinite canvas engine — shapes, sticky notes, freehand drawing, text blocks | 8 |
| 3 | Real-time sync — WebSocket server, Redis pub/sub, conflict resolution | 8 |
| 4 | User presence — live cursors, user list overlay, join/leave events | 5 |
| 5 | Room and board management — create, rename, share link, delete | 3 |
| 6 | Export board to PNG — full canvas capture, download trigger | 3 |
| 7 | Version history — snapshot on save, list versions, restore previous | 5 |
Total: 37 points. Create all 7? (yes / edit / skip one)
Creating stories one at a time — previewing each before saving.
[Monty previews each story; Deploy Dino confirms. After all 7 are confirmed:]
All 7 stories created and linked to the Zephyr project.
Added all 7 stories to Sprint 1 (Zephyr · Sprint 1).
#2180 · #2181 · #2182 · #2183 · #2184 · #2185 · #2186 — all In Backlog, ready to assign.
Test cases for #2180 — Auth0 authentication:
Test cases for #2181 — Infinite canvas engine:
In one conversation: project connected, 7 stories created, sprint populated, 10 test cases generated. Deploy Dino didn't open a ticket template or copy-paste a single line.
Story Sprout has a feature request that came out of a user interview: notification preferences. Users want to control which Silverile events trigger email notifications. Story Sprout has bullet points in a Notion doc and needs a story before tomorrow's planning session.
Story preview:
Create this story? (yes / no)
Story #2187 created. Added to Sprint 25. Generating test cases:
One prompt. One story, fully specified, in the sprint, with five test cases. Story Sprout pastes the Silverile story link into the Notion doc and closes the tab.
| Prompt | What it does |
|---|---|
| "Show me my available Silverile projects" | Lists all projects you have access to — pick one to set as default |
| "Set Zephyr as my default" | Connects AI to that project for all subsequent requests |
| "Here's my product brief: [description + tech stack]. Break this into sprint-ready stories." | AI proposes a full story breakdown as a table — review before anything is created |
| "Create all of them" | AI creates each story one at a time with preview + confirm per story |
| "Add all of them to Sprint 1" | Batch-adds the new stories to the sprint |
| "Generate test cases for story 2180 and 2181" | Generates test cases for the specified stories |
| "Turn this into a story: [feature description]" | Creates one story from a plain-English brief with full AC |
| "Yes — and add it to the current sprint and generate test cases" | Confirms story creation, adds to sprint, and generates test cases in one reply |
For day-to-day sprint work — developing stories, running tests, filing defects, and managing sprints — see the Build & Track with Silverile and AI guide.