triage

name	triage
description	Process inbox todo items into the curated roadmap (or resolve them). The triage gate between staging and committed backlog. Use when todo.md has accumulated and needs sorting. Always user-invoked.

Triage

The user typed /triage — sort the staging backlog. todo.md is the inbox for work items (unordered, untriaged); roadmap.md is the curated, ordered backlog (items that have earned a priority). Triage is the gate between them — the complement to /defer.

State dir convention: Always write to .meta/, creating it (and subdirectories) if needed.

Step 1: Read the staging backlog

Read inbox/todo.md (and surface cross-project provenance where present). List the open items so the user can see what's on the table.

If todo.md is empty or missing, say so and stop — nothing to triage.

Step 2: Triage each item

Triage is interactive — go item by item, propose a disposition, let the user confirm or redirect. For each item, the dispositions are:

• Promote → move to roadmap.md. The roadmap is ordered — ask where it belongs in priority (or propose a placement). This is the main path: "this is real work we'll prioritize."
• Do-now → small enough to just knock out this session. Implement it, then graduate it (Step 3). Skips the roadmap — promotion is optional ceremony only worth it when you want to prioritize against other work.
• Resolve / discard → already handled, stale, or superseded. Graduate it to rearview (if it was genuine completed work) or just remove it (if it was never real).
• Leave → still legitimately staging; not ready to commit. Stays in todo.md.

Match against existing roadmap items before promoting — if the todo item duplicates something already on the roadmap, merge rather than double-list.

Step 3: Graduate completed items

For any item that's actually done (do-now, or already-handled), follow the archival convention (references/archival.md): append it to archive/rearview.md with a Completed: <date> (<branch>) stamp, and remove it from todo.md. Create archive/rearview.md on first use with the header # Rearview — Completed Items.

Step 4: Log & confirm

• Append a one-line decisions.md entry summarizing what was promoted, done, or resolved (skip if nothing material changed).
• Brief confirmation: counts per disposition (e.g. "3 promoted, 1 done, 2 resolved, 4 left in staging").

Note

/hello nudges toward /triage when todo.md grows large — but triage is never forced. A long staging list is fine; it just means there's sorting to do when you have the context for it.