openchamber/.agents/skills/triage-issues/SKILL.md

name, description

name	description
triage-issues	Load when asked to triage, clean up, batch-process, or work through the issue backlog — covers the mechanical sweep (stale-fixed, dead needs-info, duplicates), fan-out assessment, and approved batch actions.

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:found from intake, or traced during this sweep). 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-review skill'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 accepted label, and leave it open. accepted marks the decision as made — later sweeps never re-ask an accepted issue, and label:accepted is 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.

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

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:

1. Mechanism anchor. For issues carrying root-cause:found (or any comment citing file:line), check whether the cited code changed since the issue's date: git log -L<line>,<line>:<file> --since=<issue date> (fall back to git 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.
2. 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.
3. 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); 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.

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.]