triage-transition

name	triage-transition
description	Mechanical estimate-and-transition of an Azure DevOps work item to the Triaged state. Called programmatically by skills that create or triage work items -- not invoked directly by the user. For user-initiated triage, use the triage skill instead.
disable-model-invocation	true

Triage Transition

Mechanically estimate and transition an Azure DevOps work item to the Triaged state.

This skill is internal plumbing -- called programmatically by skills that create or triage work items (e.g. create-task, create-bug, triage). When the user asks to triage a work item directly, use the triage skill instead.

Steps

1. Resolve the work item

Use one of the following, in priority order:

1. Provided by calling skill -- an ID passed programmatically after creation. Fetch the work item to get its title, description, and type.
2. Explicit argument -- the user provided a work item ID directly. Fetch it with full details.

Fetch with expand: "relations" so predecessor links are visible for step 2.

If neither is available, ask the user and stop.

2. Check for predecessor

Inspect the fetched relations for a predecessor link. If one exists, the work item is blocked and cannot be triaged yet:

1. Inform the user that the item has a predecessor dependency.
2. Delegate to the block-work-item skill, passing the current work item as the blocked ID and the predecessor as the blocker ID.
3. Stop -- do not proceed with estimation or state transition.

3. Estimate

If OriginalEstimate, RemainingWork, or EstimationConfidenceLevel are already set on the work item, skip this step -- carry the existing values forward and do not overwrite them.

Otherwise, follow the estimation skill, passing the work item details as input.

Present the estimate summary (T-shirt size, story points, key risks) to the user for confirmation before writing to ADO.

4. Update the work item

Call update_work_item with:

• workItemId: the work item ID
• state: "Triaged"
• priority: 4
• additionalFields:

[
  { "name": "Custom.BusinessPriority", "value": "4: Technical" },
  { "name": "Custom.Version", "value": "<current version>" },
  { "name": "Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.OriginalEstimate", "value": "<hours>" },
  { "name": "Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.RemainingWork", "value": "<hours>" },
  { "name": "Custom.EstimationConfidenceLevel", "value": "<confidence>" }
]

Required fields

• priority -- ADO requires this when transitioning to Triaged. Default to 4 (lowest) unless the work item warrants higher priority.
• Custom.BusinessPriority -- also required for the Triaged transition. Default to "4: Technical" for internal/tooling tasks. Other values follow the pattern "1: Must Have", "2: Should Have", "3: Nice to Have", "4: Technical".
• Custom.Version -- the current release version (e.g. 26.2.1). Infer from a recent work item in the same iteration if not known.

Estimation fields

Only include the estimation fields (OriginalEstimate, RemainingWork, EstimationConfidenceLevel) in additionalFields when estimation was performed in step 3. If the fields were already set on the work item, omit them from the update.

When included, the estimation skill produces hours and a confidence level, not story points. Set OriginalEstimate and RemainingWork to the same hour value, and EstimationConfidenceLevel to the skill's output.

5. Confirm

Print the work item ID, new state, estimate (hours), and confidence level.