Maintainer Triage

Maintainer Triage

Batch maintainer triage for redis/node-redis. Given a filter, review each item with the maintainer-review methodology, present concise verdicts for approval one at a time, then execute the approved GitHub action.

This skill owns the orchestration, interaction, and action execution. It does NOT re-derive how to review — the review methodology lives in the maintainer-review skill (.agents/skills/maintainer-review/SKILL.md + references/evaluation-framework.md). Read those for any actual review judgement.

Prerequisites

• gh authenticated with repo scope (gh auth status).
• Sandbox: gh network calls fail with a TLS x509 error inside the sandbox. Run every gh command with the sandbox disabled.
• Write permissions: outward writes (gh pr comment/review/merge/close, gh issue ..., gh run ..., gh api -X POST ...) are gated by the auto-mode classifier and by settings allow-rules. You cannot self-grant these (editing settings to widen permissions is blocked). If a write is denied, stop and ask the user to either add allow-rules (Bash(gh pr comment *), Bash(gh pr review *), Bash(gh pr merge *), Bash(gh pr close *), Bash(gh issue *), Bash(gh run *), Bash(gh api *)) or run the command themselves via !.

Step 1 — Gather candidates

Take a filter from the user: timeframe, author, label, or a search query.

gh pr list --repo redis/node-redis --state all --limit N \
  --json number,title,author,createdAt,state
# issues: gh issue list --repo redis/node-redis --search "..." --json number,title,author,state

• Always include state. Drop anything already MERGED/CLOSED — they need no action. (Lesson: items merge/close mid-session; don't waste a review on a done PR.)
• Show the candidate list (who / how many) and confirm the set before fanning out.

Step 2 — Pre-fetch data (avoid N× network prompts in subagents)

Cache each item's metadata + diff to a temp dir so subagents read from disk, not the network:

gh pr view <n> --repo redis/node-redis \
  --json number,title,body,author,createdAt,state,files,additions,deletions,comments,reviews,labels,url \
  > "$DIR/<n>.json"
gh pr diff <n> --repo redis/node-redis > "$DIR/<n>.diff"

Gotchas learned the hard way:

• closingIssuesReferences is not a valid --json field — it errors the whole call.
• zsh does not word-split unquoted variables — iterate with an array: PRS=(3427 3426 ...).
• $TMPDIR resolves differently inside vs outside the sandbox. Capture the real absolute path from a sandbox-disabled command and pass that absolute path to subagents.

Step 3 — Fan out maintainer-review (desk review only)

One subagent per item. Each: reads the maintainer-review SKILL + evaluation-framework, reads the cached <n>.json + <n>.diff, MAY read local repo source under packages/*/lib + specs + docs, and MUST NOT run tests / Docker / network / any gh write.

Force structured output:

• decision: ONE WORD — Merge | Revise | Supersede | Close | Evidence
  • Merge = merge-worthy as-is · Revise = merge-worthy after focused changes · Supersede = real need, simpler fix preferable · Close = not worth / already covered / unsupported · Evidence = need only plausible-but-unproven.
  • Merge/Revise are valid only when needEvidence = Demonstrated.
• needEvidence, severity, short (the tldr), detailed (full "Pull Request" compact report).

Mechanism:

• ≤ ~3 items → Agent tool in parallel.
• Many items → a Workflow (requires user opt-in). Workflow gotcha: the args param arrived as undefined/unusable — inline the item list and paths as literals in the script, don't rely on args.
• Collate into a single markdown file at repo root: summary table (sorted desc) on top, full per-item detailed reports below.

Step 4 — Present one item at a time

Exact shape, then WAIT for the user before the next:

**PR #NNNN** — <title> (<author>)
**Problem (tldr):** 1–3 sentences.
**My verdict:** <one word> — <needEvidence>, <severity>[, <bounded ask if Revise>].

Go easiest-first unless told otherwise. The user approves, asks questions, or redirects. Only disposition the current item before moving on.

Step 5 — Comment style

• Friendly, plain, concise. No jargon (don't write "source-compatible pass-through"), and don't restate the problem for an LGTM. Baseline: Thanks — this looks good to me. LGTM.
• Declines / change-requests DO need a short plain-English reason (can't be one word) plus the exact next step or reopen condition.
• Draft → user approves the wording → then post. Post the approved wording verbatim (the classifier flags deviation from what was approved).

Step 6 — Execute per verdict

• Merge: post LGTM comment → gh pr review <n> --approve → approve gated fork CI runs → wait for CI green → gh pr merge <n> --squash.
• Revise: post the change-request comment → also submit the formal review: gh pr review <n> --request-changes --body "...". A plain comment does NOT flip the PR into "Changes requested" — the formal review does. Leave the PR open.
• Close: post a polite decline comment → gh pr close <n> (issues: gh issue close <n>).
• Evidence: post an evidence-request comment; leave open.

CI handling (this repo's quirks)

• Outside-contributor fork PRs create gated Actions runs (status=completed, conclusion=action_required). Find and approve them:

  SHA=$(gh pr view <n> --repo redis/node-redis --json headRefOid -q .headRefOid)
  gh api "repos/redis/node-redis/actions/runs?head_sha=$SHA" \
    -q '.workflow_runs[]|select(.conclusion=="action_required" or .status=="waiting")|.id' \
    | while read -r id; do gh api -X POST "repos/redis/node-redis/actions/runs/$id/approve"; done
  

• Auto-merge is disabled repo-wide AND the Actions CI is NOT a required check. So gh pr merge --auto merges immediately (it does not wait for CI), and a plain merge lands regardless of CI. To honour "run CI, then merge" you must poll yourself and merge only on green. Use a background watcher: poll gh api "repos/redis/node-redis/commits/$SHA/check-runs" every ~30s; merge when running==0 && failed==0 && total>=4; bail without merging on any failure; stop the watcher if you end up merging directly. A green run is ~15 check-runs (Tests matrix + JSDoc + CodeQL + lint + Cursor Bugbot).

Guardrails

• Verify before asserting in a public comment. Never repeat a subagent's unverified claim (e.g. "the cluster scan iterators have the same bug") — grep/read the real source first. The maintainer-review subagents will speculate; the user will catch a wrong claim.
• Re-check each item's state right before acting — it may have merged/closed since Step 1.
• One outward action per explicit user approval. Merge/close/request-changes are hard to reverse; confirm per item, don't batch-act without sign-off.
• Keep company-internal references out of comments, branches, and titles.
• Final: re-verify the state of every item and report the tally (merged / closed / changes-requested / evidence-requested).