Overview
Vertical slices give the agent feedback on the complete path early. They also give the human something visible and testable to review before the entire feature is finished. This reduces the cost of discovering that the architecture, user experience, or data flow is wrong.
Dependency-aware issues are also the bridge between planning and autonomous work. The backlog becomes a machine-readable queue from which an agent can select the next valid task without needing the whole feature in one context.