Repo Triage

Repo Triage Skill

Batch-grounds open GitHub issues and stale worktrees/branches against current repo state, offers confirmed deletion/closure of what's superseded, and groups everything else into grill-ready / plan-ready / defer buckets. A thin orchestrator over three existing pieces — it contributes no parallel classification or merge-detection logic of its own beyond the join/bucket step (Phase 3/4).

Boundary with Adjacent Skills

This skill never deletes a branch, removes a worktree, or closes an issue on its own initiative — every mutation requires an explicit confirm captured in the same run (see Confirm UX below).

Procedure

Step 1 — Issue triage (no pre-filter, no concurrency cap)

python3 utils/repo_triage_classify.py Data-Wise/craft

This loops over every open issue from gh issue list, classifying each with the SAME classify_issue() that commands/git/issue-check.md and tests/test_issue_check_unit.py use — extracted at runtime from that file's fenced ```python block, never copied. tests/test_repo_triage_classify_unit.py asserts source identity between the two loaders as a standing regression guard: if repo-triage ever grows a parallel classifier, that test fails.

A gh issue view/classification failure on one issue is skipped and recorded in the errors array of the JSON output — it never aborts the whole run. Surface these in the final report (Step 4).

Step 2 — Worktree/branch triage (sequenced)

Call Operation 5 before Operation 4 — this ordering closes the exact silent-skip gap where gh pr merge --delete-branch fails on a worktree-locked branch with no clear error:

source lib/git-utils.sh
worktree_clean_dry_run dev > /tmp/repo-triage-worktrees.jsonl   # FIRST
branch_cleanup_dry_run dev > /tmp/repo-triage-branches.jsonl    # SECOND

Both are collection-only (no git worktree remove, no git branch -D). Apply the same skip-and-continue discipline as Step 1 to any per-item collection error (e.g. a branch whose gh pr list lookup fails — that candidate still gets pr_state: "unknown", it is not dropped).

Step 3 — Merge + confirm UX

source lib/repo-triage-utils.sh
merge_candidates /tmp/repo-triage-branches.jsonl /tmp/repo-triage-worktrees.jsonl

Joins Step 2's two streams on branch (the required join key both lib/git-utils.sh functions emit) so a branch that is also checked out in a worktree renders as one candidate — never two independent opt-outs. Unmatched branches (type: "branch") and unmatched worktrees (type: "worktree") pass through unchanged. merge_candidates() itself does not filter by evidence strength — it is a pure join, and its own test suite asserts a not-merged/unknown-evidence branch passes through unchanged (so a caller can still surface it, e.g. in Step 4's defer bucket).

Before building the deletion candidate list, restate dev/git Operation 4's own rule here: never offer a branch/worktree item for deletion whose merge_evidence is not-merged or unknown — exclude those from the Step 3 confirm entirely (route them to Step 4's bucketing instead, same as an unresolved issue). Only merge_evidence: "merged" or "squash-merged" items are eligible for the batch-confirm below.

Confirm UX — group the eligible merged candidates by source (issues / branches / worktrees), sort each group by evidence strength (a squash-merge with both ancestor_result: "ancestor" AND scoped_diff_result: "clean" ranks above one with only ancestor_result), and present via AskUserQuestion:

• Max 4 options per call (harness limit — same pattern as skills/code/SKILL.md Step 4). If more than 4 candidates exist, present the top 4 highest-confidence items and chain additional AskUserQuestion calls for the remainder — never truncate silently.
• Each option's description cites the evidence: issue items show classify_issue()'s reasoning string; branch/worktree items show the structured fields from Step 2 (merge_evidence, ancestor_result, pr_state, scoped_diff_result) under a one-line-summary-plus-detail template.
• On confirm, execute the approved deletion/closure directly — Operation 4/5's own interactive confirms are bypassed (already collected via --dry-run mode in Step 2), so there is exactly one confirm gate per item, not two.
• Visibly flag any items skipped due to a Step 1/2 collection error in the confirm output — e.g. "2 issues skipped due to error: #114 (gh timeout), #201 (malformed body)" — never present a partial list as if it were complete.

Step 4 — Bucket the remainder

Everything not actioned in Step 3 (i.e. moot-classified issues that were closed, and merged/squash-merged branches+worktrees that were deleted, drop out of scope here) gets bucketed:

source lib/repo-triage-utils.sh
python3 utils/repo_triage_classify.py Data-Wise/craft | jq -c '.results[]' | bucket_candidates

Bucket membership (lib/repo-triage-utils.sh's bucket_candidates(), reusing classify_issue()'s existing three-way status rather than inventing a second taxonomy):

Output additions (not a second display mechanism — reuses the top-4-plus-remainder pattern from Step 3):

• Cap each bucket's displayed items at 4, same chaining rule as the confirm UX.
• Print exactly ONE explicit "start here" next action at the end of the run: the highest-priority grill-ready item, or the top plan-ready item if grill-ready is empty.

Non-Goals

• Never calls git branch -D, git worktree remove/prune, or gh issue close without a preceding explicit confirm captured in the same run (verified by tests/test_repo_triage_utils.sh's and tests/test_git_dryrun.sh's "never mutates" checks on the underlying helper functions).
• Never re-implements classify_issue(), is_squash_merged(), or the Operation 4/5 detection logic — it only calls them and merges/buckets their output.
• Not a scheduler or a cron job — one explicit invocation per run, no background polling.

Idempotency

Re-running this skill twice in a row against the same repo state must produce an empty or shrinking candidate set — items already actioned (deleted/closed) in a prior run must never be re-proposed, since Step 1/2 always re-derive candidates from live gh/git state rather than a cached list.

Related Files

• utils/repo_triage_classify.py — issue-triage runner (Step 1).
• lib/git-utils.sh — worktree_clean_dry_run(), branch_cleanup_dry_run() (Step 2).
• lib/repo-triage-utils.sh — merge_candidates(), bucket_candidates() (Steps 3–4).
• tests/test_repo_triage_classify_unit.py, tests/test_git_dryrun.sh, tests/test_repo_triage_utils.sh — unit coverage per phase.