Story Board - Backlog for AI Coding Agents

Stories often reach the sprint before they're ready: untestable criteria, a step that needs production access, an unfinished dependency. People can ask in stand-up. AI coding agents like IBM Bob, Claude Code, Copilot and Codex now pick up stories too, and they can't. Nothing stops an agent from: - building from an unclear story - marking work done without proof - changing work only a person should do SOLUTION Refinery is a readiness gate for backlogs shared by people and AI agents. - Assess: weighted checks for acceptance criteria, failure cases, rollout and the team's Definition of Ready, plus four "could an agent build this without asking?" checks. - Explain: one of four verdicts, from Ready to Not ready, with a question for the author on every failed check. - Enforce: unrefined stories stay in Backlog or Refinement. Done needs a test report, a screenshot if the UI changed, and a commit. Dependencies must finish first. Agents can't touch human-only work. Every change is logged with who and why. TARGET USERS Scrum teams handing work to AI coding agents: product owners, developers and Scrum Masters. HOW THEY USE IT - Story Board (web app): create, drag and assess stories, attach evidence, mark dependencies and human-only work. - Linear: add the ready-check label to assess an issue. - AI agents: connect to the MCP server with one command from Claude Code, Copilot CLI or Codex. WHAT MAKES IT UNIQUE - Built for agents: about half the quality score asks whether an agent could build the story unaided. - Rules live in the API, not the UI, so people and agents follow the same ones. - A refused agent is told why, so it reports back instead of working around the rule.