Triage New Issues

Triage New Issues Skill

Review new or untriaged GitHub issues, assess priority based on urgency signals, suggest labels, and recommend owners.

When to Use

Activate when:

• Processing new incoming issues
• Reviewing untriaged backlog
• Assessing issue priority
• Assigning issues to owners

Fetching and Applying Triage

Use the gh CLI (must be installed and authenticated):

# Find untriaged issues
gh issue list --search 'no:label' --json number,title,body,labels

# Apply labels after triage
gh issue edit <n> --add-label <label>

Priority Signals

Critical (P0)

Keywords: "down", "outage", "security", "vulnerability", "production", "urgent", "ASAP", "breach" Labels: critical, security, production Action: Immediate attention required

High (P1)

Keywords: "blocking", "regression", "broken", "can't use", "data loss", "crash" Labels: blocker, regression, priority/high Action: Address this sprint

Medium (P2)

Keywords: "bug", "incorrect", "should", "expected", "wrong" Labels: bug, priority/medium Action: Schedule for upcoming sprint

Low (P3)

Keywords: "nice to have", "minor", "cosmetic", "enhancement", "workaround exists" Labels: enhancement, low-priority Action: Add to backlog

Triage Guidelines

Assessment Process

1. Read title and full description
2. Scan for urgency keywords and labels
3. Check for existing labels that signal priority
4. Assess impact (how many users affected)
5. Look for workarounds mentioned
6. Check if duplicate of existing issue
7. Determine ownership: check CODEOWNERS, recent git log on affected paths, or past assignees of similar issues — omit the assignee suggestion if none found

When to Escalate

• Security vulnerabilities → Flag immediately
• Production outages → Notify on-call
• Data integrity issues → High priority regardless of other signals

When to Ask Questions

• Unclear reproduction steps
• Missing environment details
• Ambiguous severity ("it's broken" but unclear impact)
• No indication of urgency or timeline

Red Flags

• Issues with no response from author (>7 days)
• Duplicate of closed/wontfix issue
• Feature request disguised as bug
• Missing required information from template

Output Structure (per issue)

## Triage: #[number] — [title]

### Priority Assessment

**Urgency**: [Critical | High | Medium | Low]
**Impact**: [Wide | Moderate | Limited]
**Recommended Priority**: P[0-3]

| Signal | Indicator |
|--------|-----------|
| [Keyword/label found] | [What it suggests] |

### Classification

**Type**: [Bug | Feature | Question | Task]
**Area**: [Component or area affected]
**Suggested Labels**: `priority/high`, `bug`, `area/auth`
**Suggested Assignee**: @username — based on CODEOWNERS, git history, or similar past issues (omit if no owner found)

### Assessment

[Summary of the issue and reasoning for priority assignment]

### Clarifying Questions (if needed)

- [ ] [Question to understand severity]

### Recommendation

[Immediate action | Next sprint | Backlog | Needs info | Duplicate of #X]