openchamber Turn an unbounded issue queue into a short list of maintainer decisions. Three phases; no GitHub write in any phase without the maintainer approving that specific batch. Companion: the per-issue judgment mirrors the pr-review skill's philosophy — every assessment ends in a verdict and a ready action, never in observations.
Verdicts
- FIX-READY — a real bug with a traced mechanism (
root-cause:foundfrom intake, or traced during this sweep) and no open PR for it (see Existing PR first). Ready action: a one-line fix-backlog entry (file:line, mechanism, suggested fix shape) — these accumulate into the sweep's fix list for agents to implement. - NEEDS-REPORTER — cannot proceed without the reporter. Ready action: the single unanswerable question, posted once; the issue then lives on a clock (close as stale after ~30 days of silence).
- CLOSE-FIXED — behavior fixed by a merged change. Ready action: close comment naming the commit/PR and the release that carries it.
- CLOSE-DUPLICATE — same failure as an existing issue. Keep the issue with the better evidence, close the other naming it.
- CLOSE-DECLINE — a feature or behavior the product should not take (the
pr-reviewskill's whim/scope grounds apply). Ready action: honest close comment; where a real ache underlies it, salvage per the pr-review skill's rule. - FEATURE-DECISION — a plausible feature only the maintainer can judge. Ready action: the product question in one line plus drafted comments for both answers. These go to the maintainer as a numbered list, like the PR triage's Product fit block. The maintainer's answer resolves the issue's fate mechanically:
- "так" (wanted) → post the acceptance comment (what was approved and, when known, the welcome implementation shape), add the
acceptedlabel, and leave it open.acceptedmarks the decision as made — later sweeps never re-ask anacceptedissue, andlabel:acceptedis the implementation roadmap for agents and contributors. - "ні" (declined) → post the drafted decline comment (with ache salvage where one underlies it) and close as not planned.
- A conditional answer ("так, але тільки як настройка", "ні в такому вигляді, але X — так") is folded into the posted comment verbatim in spirit — the maintainer's condition becomes the recorded scope.
- "так" (wanted) → post the acceptance comment (what was approved and, when known, the welcome implementation shape), add the
Existing PR first. Before any verdict that sends an issue toward implementation (FIX-READY, an accepted feature), find out whether someone already has the fix in flight: gh pr list --search "<issue-number> OR <error string> OR <title terms>" --state open, plus the issue's own timeline (linked PRs, "opened a PR" comments — the reporter's fix is easy to miss when the PR body says fixes #N and the issue thread stays silent). The same check gates every close: an issue with an open PR against it is never closed as stale or silently-fixed — the PR is the activity, and its review decides the issue's fate. An open PR moves the issue out of the fix backlog and into the PR queue: the ready action is a verdict on that PR (apply the pr-review skill), never a parallel in-house fix. A contributor who reported a bug and fixed it the same day, then watched a duplicate patch land on top, is owed a public apology and a changelog credit; the check costs one command.
Phase 1 — Mechanical sweep
Fetch all open issues with gh issue list --limit above the real count. Bucket cheaply before any deep reading:
| Bucket | Signal | Likely verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Stale-fixed | references code/behavior changed by merged PRs; CHANGELOG [Unreleased]/recent releases mention the symptom |
CLOSE-FIXED (verify per Silently-fixed detection) |
| Dead needs-info | needs-info with no reporter reply > 30 days |
close as stale |
| Duplicate clusters | title/error-string similarity across open issues | CLOSE-DUPLICATE |
| Feature wishes | enhancement |
FEATURE-DECISION or CLOSE-DECLINE |
| Traced bugs | root-cause:found |
FIX-READY candidates, verify the trace still applies and no PR is open for it |
Silently-fixed detection
Many fixes land without linking the issue they resolve, so an issue can sit open with a perfectly valid-looking repro that describes code which no longer exists. A fresh-looking issue is not proof of a live bug — probe in this order, strongest evidence first:
- Mechanism anchor. For issues carrying
root-cause:found(or any comment citingfile:line), check whether the cited code changed since the issue's date:git log -L<line>,<line>:<file> --since=<issue date>(fall back togit log --since -- <file>when lines drifted). Untouched code → the bug is live. Changed code → re-read the mechanism on current main; if it is gone, this is CLOSE-FIXED with the commit as evidence. - Repro re-run. When the intake comment carries an inline reproduction script or test, run it against current main. Passing repro = fixed, with the run as evidence.
- Symptom search. Extract the issue's distinctive strings (error messages, function names, user-visible symptom terms) and search
git log --grep,CHANGELOG.md, and merged PR titles/bodies since the issue's creation date.
CLOSE-FIXED always names its evidence (commit, PR, or repro run), and a commit counts only when it is reachable from main — git merge-base --is-ancestor <sha> origin/main — because git log across all refs happily surfaces fixes that live on abandoned branches; a hunch that "this area was reworked" downgrades to a comment asking the reporter to retry on current main, keeping the issue open on the needs-reporter clock.
Every issue/PR reference in maintainer-facing reports is a clickable link ([#3164](https://github.com/openchamber/openchamber/issues/3164)), never a bare number; each entry carries 2–4 sentences — enough to decide without a follow-up question — and any manual-check note lives inside the entry, never in a separate number-repeating section. An issue where the maintainer already commented or the reporter replied to a question runs in pickup mode: state the thread first, continue it, never re-ask a decided question.
Weigh trusted community reviewers' comments (see the triage-prs skill's rule — same names, same weight) and the intake bot's "For the maintainer" lines as strong signals. Deliver the sweep as one report and stop for approval.
Phase 2 — Approved batch actions
Execute approved closes/comments with retries and ~1s spacing; log results; re-verify the open count. Closes use --reason "completed" for fixed and --reason "not planned" for declines/duplicates/stale.
Phase 3 — Assessment fan-out
For the surviving pool, fan out subagents (~15 issues each) that read the issue, its comments, and the relevant code, and return per-issue verdict blocks. Consolidate grouped by verdict, FEATURE-DECISION questions in a numbered block for the maintainer, FIX-READY entries as an ordered fix backlog. Stop for approval; then act, and hand the approved fix backlog to implementation agents in dependency-safe batches.
Message templates
stale-close (dead needs-info)
Closing as stale: the requested details never arrived, and without them this can't be reproduced. If you hit it again on a current version, a fresh report with the missing details is welcome.
fixed-close
This was fixed by [ref] and ships in [release/next release]. Closing — if the problem persists there, comment and it will be reopened.
duplicate-close
Closing as a duplicate of #[N], which tracks the same failure[: one clause on what this report added, if anything]. Follow that issue for updates.
decline-close
Thanks — closing this one: [honest one-sentence reason grounded in product direction or maintenance cost]. [If a real ache underlies it: the welcome shape of a future change.]