Pattern: Vertical slice

Decompose work into units that each cut top-to-bottom through the stack (UI → API → DB) so every unit is independently buildable, shippable, and demoable — rather than horizontal layers that only deliver value once all are complete.

Applied by (backlinks)

Matt Pocock — Skills for Real Engineers:

• mp-to-tickets — produces “independently-grabbable” vertical-slice issues.

GSD:

• gsd-plan-phase — --mvp mode plans vertical slices (UI→API→DB).

Addy Osmani — Agent Skills:

• addy-planning — breaks work into independently shippable slices.
• addy-incremental-implementation — builds one slice at a time, top-to-bottom.

BMAD:

• bmad-create-epics-and-stories — decomposes requirements into epics of independently shippable stories.
• bmad-create-story — each story is one self-contained, shippable slice, built one at a time.

Compound Engineering:

• ce-work — executes the guardrailed plan slice-by-slice through quality gates.

Superpowers:

• sp-writing-plans — each task is the smallest unit that carries its own test cycle and is worth a reviewer’s gate — an independently testable slice.

Seeds:

• seeds-plan-submit — the steps section’s own instruction is the rule: “Decompose into ordered, independent implementation steps”, each becoming exactly one child seed.
• seeds-dep — wires the ordering between those slices, with an explicit warning against over-wiring, since every unnecessary edge hides work from seeds-ready.

Beads:

• beads-mol — a poured molecule is a set of independently-claimable, dependency-ordered beads, one per formula step; the slicing is inherited from the template rather than reasoned out per task.

pstack:

• pstack-principle-sequence-verifiable-units — break work into small units that each end in a verifiable state, check each before the next, and order delivery so the sequence proves itself to a reviewer. That third clause treats sequencing as a review affordance rather than only an execution tactic, and it governs how commits and PRs are stacked as well as how work is decomposed.
• pstack-figure-it-out — decompose into atomic, independently-landable units, sequenced riskiest-unknown-first, each run as an experiment with a verdict before the next begins.

See Also

• artifact-issue — how Matt’s skills materialize a slice.
• stage-plan — the stage where this applies.