It's the same story that it's always been, agents or not, that engineers need to be analysts and translate poorly defined criteria into something that's fit for purpose.

But because we will do so anyway, people should adapt and start to write their tickets like prompts.

Assign agents the biggest piece justifiable

This has always worked like this. Let the person working on the ticket discover the implementation details, break it down into tasks, maybe delegate some after they’ve dipped their toes and know how to split it into sub-tasks better.

And of course, obligatory Shape up mention: https://basecamp.com/shapeup

"Assign agents the biggest piece justifiable. I can summarize a product outcome or a feature in two lines. That’s what goes on the ticket. Let the agents figure out subtasks when the work is ready for review, not before. Once you break an initiative into technical issues upfront, the outcome gets lost and the focus shifts to minutiae."

This is not about the ticket being well defined, this is about the agent having the larger context of what you are trying to do

And, it goes both ways. Code and back-and-forth prompting can write clarifying comments or update acceptance criteria with specificity. Likewise, agents can add comments for the handover log and, in the morning, pull comments for context.

I've even had the agents read/write sub-tickets, follow-on tickets, sub-tasks, etc. which can new reviewed and modified by myself and teammates in the larger planning context. It's a delight!