Triage Issues

Triage Issues

A two-tier GitHub issue triage skill. Tier 1 produces quick warnings for session-start hooks. Tier 2 performs full backlog analysis with actionable recommendations requiring per-action approval.

Tier Selection

• Tier 1: When invoked from a SessionStart hook or when the user asks for a quick issue check. Output warnings only, take no actions.
• Tier 2: When the user explicitly asks to triage issues, review the backlog, or invokes /triage-issues. Full analysis with action queue.

Tier 1: Quick Check

Run these checks using gh CLI against the current repository. Output warning lines only.

Data Gathering

gh issue list --state open --json number,title,body,updatedAt,milestone --limit 200
gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/milestones --jq '.[] | {title, open_issues, state}'

Checks

Output Format

=== Issue Triage ===
WARNING: 2 issues missing milestones: #42, #45
WARNING: 1 issue has no description: #45
WARNING: 3 stale issues (14+ days): #12, #18, #31
WARNING: Stale milestones (no open issues): v1.6 Voice Input
OK: 8 issues fully triaged
================

When all checks pass:

=== Issue Triage ===
OK: All 10 issues fully triaged
================

Tier 1 rules:

• No actions taken, warnings only
• Target execution under 5 seconds
• Output must be parseable by hooks (plain text, one warning per line)

Tier 2: Full Triage

Data Gathering

Same gh commands as Tier 1, plus fetch issue comments for staleness context:

gh issue list --state open --json number,title,body,labels,updatedAt,milestone,assignees --limit 200
gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/milestones --jq '.[] | {title, number, open_issues, closed_issues, state, due_on}'

Report Sections

Present the report using these sections:

Milestone Health For each open milestone:

• Open / closed issue count and completion percentage
• Count of stale issues (14+ days)
• Age of oldest open issue
• Due date status (if set)

Quality Gaps Issues failing the quality bar, grouped by failure type:

• No milestone assigned
• No description or description under 20 characters
• Stale (no activity 14+ days)
• No assignee (informational, not blocking)

Potential Duplicates Flag issue pairs with significant title keyword overlap:

• Strip common words (the, a, an, for, to, in, of, and, or, is, it, as, at, by, on, with)
• Compare remaining significant words
• Flag pairs sharing 50%+ of significant title words
• Present as: #X "title" <-> #Y "title" (N shared words)

Action Queue Propose actions based on findings. Present each action individually for approval.

Action Approval Flow

Present one action at a time:

1. Describe the action and rationale
2. Wait for approval: yes (execute), skip (next action), stop (end queue)
3. Execute approved actions via gh CLI
4. Report result before moving to next action

Example actions:

• "Assign #45 to milestone vX.Y?" → gh issue edit 45 --milestone "vX.Y"
• "Close #12 as stale (no activity 45 days)?" → gh issue close 12 -r "not planned" -c "Closing: no activity for 45 days. Reopen if still relevant."
• "Comment on #31 requesting status update?" → gh issue comment 31 -b "This issue has had no activity for N days. Is it still being worked on?"
• "Close milestone vX.Y (no open issues)?" → gh api -X PATCH repos/{owner}/{repo}/milestones/N -f state=closed

Quality Bar

Scope Boundaries

This skill does NOT:

• Auto-create issues
• Modify issue bodies (only adds comments)
• Manage labels
• Interact with PRs (separate concern)
• Take any action without per-action approval (Tier 2)
• Take any action at all in Tier 1 (warnings only)

Dependencies

• gh CLI authenticated with repo access
• Repository has GitHub issues enabled