britt At-Risk Detection Skill
Proactively scan GitHub issues and pull requests to identify at-risk items before they become problems.
When to Use
Activate when:
- Starting a new sprint or planning session
- During standup to identify blockers
- Weekly health checks of the project
- When asked about project health or status
- Before milestone deadlines
- When triaging backlog items
Analysis Approach
Prerequisite: Requires the gh CLI. Fetch data with, e.g.:
gh issue list --state open --limit 30 --json number,title,updatedAt,labels,assignees,milestone,comments
gh pr list --state open --json number,title,updatedAt,additions,deletions,isDraft,reviewRequests
Quick Mode (Default)
Fetch the 30 most recent open issues:
- Fast (seconds)
- Good for daily checks
- May miss older stale items
Comprehensive Mode
Fetch ALL open issues by paginating:
- Thorough analysis
- Slower for large repositories
- Best for milestone reviews
Risk Types and Detection Heuristics
Stale Items
Signal: No activity for extended period Default Threshold: 14 days for issues, 3 days for PRs awaiting review Severity Escalation:
- Warning: > threshold days since last activity
- Critical: > 2x threshold days since last activity
How to detect: Check updated_at field on each issue/PR. Calculate days since last update.
Blocked Work
Signals:
- Has labels matching:
blocked,waiting,on-hold,waiting-for-response - Body contains: "blocked by #", "waiting on", "depends on", "blocked until"
- PR is in draft status
- PR has merge conflicts (if detectable from comments)
How to detect: Check labels array for blocking keywords. Search body text for blocking phrases.
Deadline Risks
Signal: Milestone deadline approaching or overdue Severity Levels:
- Critical: Overdue or due within 2 days
- Warning: Due within 7 days
How to detect: Check if issue has a milestone with a due_on date. Compare to current date.
Scope Creep
Signals:
- Issues with high comment count (>30 comments)
- PRs with many lines changed (>500 warning, >1000 critical)
How to detect: Check comments count on issues. For PRs, check additions + deletions if available.
Assignment Issues
Signal: High-priority issue without assignee
Priority Labels: priority:high, urgent, P1, P0, critical, blocker
How to detect: Check if assignee is null AND labels contain any priority keywords.
Output Formats
Project Health Summary
## Project Health: [Project Name]
### Summary
- **Total Open Items**: X (Y issues, Z PRs)
- **At-Risk Items**: N
- **Health Score**: X%
### Risk Breakdown
- Critical: X
- Warning: Y
- Info: Z
### Overloaded Assignees (if any)
- @username: N assigned issues
Health Score = 100 × (1 − atRiskCount / totalOpenItems), rounded to the nearest integer.
At-Risk Item Report
## At-Risk: #[number] - [title]
**Severity**: [Critical | Warning | Info]
**Type**: [Issue | PR]
**URL**: [link]
**Assignee**: @username
### Risk Signals
- [signal type]: [description]
### Suggestions
- [actionable recommendation]
Generating Suggestions
For each risk signal detected, provide actionable suggestions:
| Risk Type | Suggestion |
|---|---|
| Stale issue | "Comment with status update or close if no longer relevant" |
| Stale PR | "Request review or close if superseded" |
| Blocked | "Resolve blocking dependency or re-prioritize" |
| Deadline approaching | "Break into smaller milestones or adjust deadline" |
| Scope creep | "Split into smaller issues or create a tracking epic" |
| Unassigned high-priority | "Assign an owner immediately" |
| Overloaded assignee | "Redistribute work or adjust priorities" |
Overloaded Assignee Detection
Track issue counts per assignee:
- Warning: > 7 assigned issues
- Critical: > 10 assigned issues
Configuration Defaults
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| staleDays | 14 | Days before issue is stale |
| prStaleReviewDays | 3 | Days before PR awaiting review is stale |
| deadlineWarningDays | 7 | Days before deadline to warn |
| maxCommentsBeforeScopeWarning | 30 | Comment threshold for scope creep |
| maxAssignedIssuesPerPerson | 10 | Max issues before overload warning |
Example Workflows
Morning Health Check
- Fetch recent open issues
- Apply all heuristics to each issue
- Present health summary with risk breakdown
- Highlight any critical items requiring immediate attention
Individual Issue Assessment
- Fetch the specific issue with all comments
- Apply all heuristic checks
- Present detailed risk analysis with signals and suggestions
Pre-Sprint Cleanup
- Fetch ALL open issues (comprehensive mode)
- Apply all heuristics
- Sort by severity (critical first)
- Present full at-risk report
- Suggest actions for each at-risk item
Common Mistakes
- Flagging draft PRs as stale-awaiting-review - a draft is not awaiting review; treat it as in-progress or blocked, not a stale review.
- Trusting Quick Mode for staleness - it fetches the 30 most recent items sorted by recency, so it misses exactly the stalest items. Note this limitation in the report; use Comprehensive Mode to find them.
- Conflating parked and forgotten work - items labeled
on-holdare intentionally parked; report them separately from genuinely forgotten stale items.