lintel-board-prioritise

name	lintel-board-prioritise
description	Groom and prioritise board work items — clean up done tasks, break down oversized work, and align priorities with the Lintel vision.

/lintel-board-prioritise — Groom and Prioritise Board Work Items

Review all work items on the board, clean up completed/stale items, break down oversized tasks, and prioritise the backlog aligned with the Lintel vision.

Context: Lintel Vision

Lintel is the AI-human engineering platform — both measurement system and execution engine. Prioritisation should favour work that advances these pillars (in order):

1. Event infrastructure — event store, bus, projections, subscriptions
2. Collaboration & routing — teams, channels, integrations
3. Guardrails & safety — cost limits, escalation, sandbox hardening
4. Deployment & observability — deployments, incidents, feature flags
5. Measurement & analytics — DORA metrics, agent accuracy, team velocity
6. Continuous improvement — learning loops, automated remediation

Workflow Capacity Reference

A single feature_to_pr workflow run can handle work that fits in roughly one focused feature or bug fix — 11 stages: ingest → route → setup_workspace → research → plan → implement (up to 5 review cycles) → review → close. If a task requires multiple unrelated code changes across different packages, or touches more than ~3 files substantially, it should be broken down.

Steps

1. Fetch current state

Use MCP tools to gather data:

• mcp__lintel__boards_list_boards — get all boards (needs a project_id; list projects first if needed)
• mcp__lintel__work-items_list_work_items — get all work items

Present a summary table of current work items grouped by status.

2. Groom — remove completed work

Identify work items with terminal statuses (merged, closed) — these are done. Delete them with mcp__lintel__work-items_remove_work_item.

Also identify failed items — ask the user whether to retry (move back to open) or delete.

Report what was cleaned up.

3. Assess scope — break down oversized tasks

For each remaining open work item, evaluate whether it can be completed in a single feature_to_pr run:

Too big if:

• Description mentions multiple unrelated changes
• Touches more than 3 packages substantially
• Contains words like "and also", "plus", "as well as" suggesting bundled work
• Would require multiple PRs to review sensibly

For oversized items:

• Propose a breakdown into smaller work items (each achievable in one workflow run)
• Ask the user to confirm the breakdown
• On confirmation: create the new smaller work items with mcp__lintel__work-items_create_work_item, then delete the original with mcp__lintel__work-items_remove_work_item

4. Prioritise

Rank all remaining open work items by:

1. Vision alignment — how directly does this advance the Lintel vision pillars (see above)?
2. Unblocking value — does this unblock other work items or capabilities?
3. Foundation-first — lower-layer work (event infra, contracts) before higher-layer (UI, analytics)
4. Risk reduction — security, data integrity, and correctness issues first
5. User impact — features that make the platform usable for real workflows

Present the proposed priority order as a numbered list with brief rationale for each position.

5. Apply priority

After user confirms the priority order:

• Update column_position on each work item using mcp__lintel__work-items_update_work_item to reflect the agreed priority (position 0 = highest priority)

6. Summary

Show the final board state: a clean table of prioritised work items with title, type, status, and position.

Important

• Always ask for user confirmation before deleting items or creating breakdowns
• Never delete in_progress or in_review items — those have active workflows
• Use the Lintel MCP tools (mcp__lintel__*), not HTTP requests
• If no project_id is known, use mcp__lintel__projects_list_projects to find it first