Debt Triage

Debt Triage — Backlog Review and Prioritization

Announce at start: "I'm using the coordinator:debt-triage skill to review the debt backlog."

An EM-PM conversation, not a dispatched agent — the EM reads the backlog, applies judgment, and presents recommendations. Trigger on demand, at >20 open items, or after a refactor that may have resolved several. Rationale, clustering detail, structural-probe calibration: wiki.

On a PowerShell host, every CLI below takes its .exe launcher through the call operator (Shape W), never the ${...} POSIX-shell form shown. Ladder and shapes: snippets/resolve-coordinator-bin.md.

Run backlog-grind-assemble brief debt-triage (per snippets/resolve-coordinator-bin.md) before Step 1 — it returns, over state/debt-backlog/, state/bug-backlog/, and state/improvement-queue/: open items with severity breakdown, bug-backlog cross-reference (exact surface-field match), improvement-queue entries with clustering evidence, and a batched PM-gate. Steps 2, 3, 6, and 6b below stay EM-performed until the debt-backlog terminus op ships.

Step 0: Surface prior rejections

Check tasks/out-of-scope/*.md (skip silently if absent). For any concept overlapping the triage, surface: "This is similar to tasks/out-of-scope/<concept>.md — we rejected this because [reason]. Still feel the same?" — confirm, reconsider (delete the file), or override.

Step 1: Read current state

Take the brief output as-is. Broader file-path/description-similarity overlap beyond the surface-field match stays an EM judgment pass over the same evidence, applied before presenting overlaps to the PM for a dedup decision (populate evidence: on both entries).

Improvement-queue classification (also from brief) is EM judgment, not a disk predicate:

• Universal — would apply to any coordinator-pipeline project → flag for /learn-lessons local-run routing; do NOT pull into the triage path.
• Project-specific — flows into the standard triage path, terminating in a Step 6b baton (never a migration into state/debt-backlog/ — that disposition is retired).

Present: "Improvement queue: N entries — M universal (flagged for lessons-outbox), K project-specific (flowing into triage)." Doctrine ref: CLAUDE.md § Improvement Queue.

Step 2: Verify relevance (Haiku agents)

Dispatch Haiku agents, grouped by system, to mechanically re-confirm each open item against current code: history since the finding's created date, the cited file:line still shows the issue. Verdict per item — still-open / already-fixed / partially-addressed.

already-fixed → mark no-longer-applicable; partially-addressed → update the description from the Haiku report. Haiku, not Sonnet — rationale: wiki.

Step 3: Re-prioritize

Blocking other work → P0. In a D/F-graded system → P1. In a recently A/B-graded system → may deprioritize to P2. >30 days with no activity → flag for PM attention.

Query historical nature: tech-debt completions (query-completions --where "nature=tech-debt" --since "90d" --sort "-loe.tshirt" --format markdown-list, per snippets/resolve-coordinator-bin.md) before grouping: high-LoE areas in the last 90d indicate festering complexity — escalate open items there. Zero-activity areas may reflect avoidance — flag: "We have carried this debt for N days without touching it — is that intentional?" Present a one-paragraph summary before Step 4; zero-row case: (no tech-debt completions logged in last 90d — hot-zone analysis unavailable).

Step 4: Group for execution

## Triage Results
### Closed (no longer applicable): N items
| ID | Reason |
### Recommended for immediate action: N items
| ID | System | Severity | Description | Effort |
### Can defer: N items
| ID | System | Severity | Reason to defer |
### Needs PM decision (YAGNI/scope): N items
| ID | System | Description | Question |

Step 5: Present to PM

Ask for: (1) approval to close no-longer-applicable items; (2) YAGNI/scope calls; (3) prioritization of immediate-action items; (4) agreement on deferral reasoning; (5) disposition of every surviving project-specific improvement-queue entry (Step 1) under the four Step 6b classes — present the candidate list (class, clusters per the brief's clustering evidence) here; Step 6b writes only after this authorization and does not gate a second time.

Step 6: Update backlog

After PM decisions:

1. Close resolved items — stamp status: closed, closed_at:, closed_by: <sha>, then mkdir -p archive/debt-backlog/<YYYY-MM> and git mv the entry in. Never rmdir state/debt-backlog/ even if it empties.

2. Update severity per PM direction.

3. Remove YAGNI items the same way as (1), closed_by referencing the PM decision.

4. For a load-bearing rejection (scope/doctrine conflict, cost-benefit, architectural veto — never a bug), write tasks/out-of-scope/<concept>.md, one file per concept (append "Prior requests" to an existing file rather than duplicating):

   # Out of scope: <concept>
   **First raised:** YYYY-MM-DD
   **Status:** Rejected (open to reconsideration)
   ## What was proposed
   ## Why we rejected it
   ## Prior requests
   - YYYY-MM-DD: [how this came up]
   ## What would change our minds
   

5. Commit scoped, explicit-path: git commit -m "debt-triage: reviewed N items, closed M, N remain open" -- <every touched path>.

Step 6b: Terminate surviving improvement-queue entries

A surviving project-specific entry (not closed, not YAGNI'd) lands in exactly one of four classes — never a fifth, never a fallthrough; an unclear entry means Step 5's classification isn't finished, return there. This step performs the write Step 5 item 5 already authorized — it is not a second gate.

The brief's clustering (MIN_CLUSTER_SIZE=3, directory signal suppressed) degrades to EM judgment as a last resort only. Expect roughly half the proposed clusters to be noise — split/merge/discard by judgment before Step 5. Degrade-order detail: wiki.

1. Solo baton — large enough to stand alone. Scaffold via coordinator-doc-new, category: queue-derived-baton, body authored from the source entry's own context. Close and archive the source entry (git mv, as Step 6).
2. Themed baton — N entries sharing a genuine thesis (not a shared keyword). Author the shared thesis, why they belong together, the picker-up's first move, every constituent id/path. ≤30 authoring-lines/item. Write initiative on the baton and every constituent row, bidirectionally, only on graduation. Close/archive constituents as class 1.
3. Immediate dispatch — resolvable now, in-session. Eligible only if the fix is BOTH tradeoff-free AND non-structural (touches no module boundary); anything else is a baton (class 1/2) regardless of size. Fire a Sonnet executor now; close the source entry with closed_by referencing the fix commit.
4. Close, or explicit park — won't-do closes as Step 6. A deliberate park to state/debt-backlog/ is a distinct disposition (never a default sink for triage-didn't-reach entries): status: deferred with a mandatory why_blocked field (never open), via coordinator-queue-append --schema debt-backlog (per snippets/resolve-coordinator-bin.md). Stamp the grant this step already holds — pm_approved: true (this ceremony asserting the Step 5 gate fired, not a second approval act), deferred_by: /debt-triage <session-id>, deferred_until: <ISO date>, and case_against (the argument that lost, so a later triager reads both sides). A park without an expiry is how a record drifts unread; a sibling deny refuses an ungranted deferred write. Those four and why_blocked above are the exact five debt-backlog.schema.json's status: deferred branch requires — omit one and the ceremony writes a row that fails our own schema.

Universal entries (Step 1) are not part of this disposition — they stay in state/improvement-queue/ until routed via /learn-lessons.

Commit shape: commit class-1/2 baton writes, class-3 fixes, and class-4 closures/parks separately from Step 6's closure commit. Mirror Step 6's archive mechanics for each source entry (archive/improvement-queue/<YYYY-MM>/, git mv, never rmdir), explicit-path git add -- <archived-path> <baton-or-park-path>, naming the source id and outcome class in the message.

Skip this step entirely if no project-specific entries survived Step 5.

Notes

• The EM triages severity; only the PM removes items (YAGNI call).
• Items verified no-longer-applicable close without PM approval.
• This skill produces no code changes — it's a backlog management activity.