Blog Dashboard Cleanup

Blog Dashboard Cleanup

Remove stale or stuck cards from the blog pipeline Kanban board before they reach WordPress staging. Safe to run at any time — it never touches WordPress.

What Gets Removed

By default (no argument), this skill removes cards whose stage is any of:

• ideas — never started
• writing — stuck in the writing substage
• copyedit — stuck in the copyedit substage
• header_image — stuck in the header image substage
• creating — stuck in the creating column (catch-all)

Cards in staging, review, or scheduled are left untouched — they have live WordPress drafts behind them.

If the user passes --all, remove every card regardless of stage.

State File Location

The dashboard state lives at dashboard/state.json relative to the plugin root. Read references/state-file-ops.md for the path-resolution and file-locking patterns used in the steps below.

Steps

Step 1: Read Current State

Use the path resolution and shared-lock read pattern from references/state-file-ops.md. Load cards = data.get("cards", []).

Step 2: Identify Cards to Remove

Use the filter-cards pattern from references/state-file-ops.md, passing the user's argument (None or "--all").

Step 3: Confirm Before Removing

If there is nothing to remove, tell the user:

Dashboard is already clean — no stuck cards found.

  Cards in staging / review / scheduled: N

If there are cards to remove, print a summary and ask for confirmation:

Cards to remove (stuck before staging):

  ID        Stage         Topic
  --------  ------------  ------------------------------------------
  a1b2c3d4  writing       Testing OAuth 2.0 Flows in Postman
  e5f6g7h8  ideas         GraphQL Testing with Postman

Remove these 2 card(s)? [y/N]

If the user passes --all, the confirmation message should say "Remove ALL N card(s) from the board?" instead.

Read the user's response. If they say anything other than y or yes (case-insensitive), abort:

Cancelled — no cards removed.

Step 4: Write Updated State

Set data["cards"] = to_keep, then use the exclusive-lock write pattern from references/state-file-ops.md.

Step 5: Confirm Result

Removed 2 card(s) from the dashboard.

  Kept (staging / review / scheduled): 3
  Board is clean — safe to continue the pipeline.

Important Notes

• This skill only edits dashboard/state.json. It does not delete blog-output files, WordPress drafts, or any other files.
• If a card has a wordpress_id and is still in a pre-staging stage (e.g., stuck in writing with a WP ID somehow), it is still removed — the WP draft remains and can be found manually in wp-admin.
• The dashboard does not need to be running for this skill to work.