groom

name	groom
description	Groom the backlog — tag untagged issues with skill:* labels, verify priorities, surface stale in-progress work
allowed-tools	Bash, Read
user-invocable	true
metadata	{"version":"1.0","created":"2026-04-28T00:00:00.000Z","author":"Ability.ai","changelog":["1.0: Initial version — tags untagged issues with skill:* labels, verifies priorities, and surfaces stale in-progress work"]}

Groom

ℹ️ First, set expectations: before anything else, print one short line with this skill's version and its most recent change — the top entry of metadata.changelog above — e.g. groom vX.Y — recent: <summary>. Then proceed.

Audit the open issue backlog for this agent. Tags issues with the skill they affect, surfaces missing priorities, and flags stale in-progress work. This is the agent-dev equivalent of backlog grooming — but the "areas" are skills, not features.

State Dependencies

Source	Location	Read	Write	Description
GitHub Issues	Current repo	Yes	Yes	Backlog issues
GitHub Labels	skill:, status:, priority:*	Yes	Yes	Apply missing labels
Agent Skills	.claude/skills/	Yes	No	Available skills to tag against

Process

Step 1: Discover Available Skills

ls .claude/skills/

Build a list of skill names from the directory. These become the valid skill:* label values.

Also check if skill:* labels already exist in the repo:

gh label list --json name --jq '.[].name' | grep '^skill:'

Create any missing skill labels (one per skill directory):

gh label create "skill:$SKILL_NAME" --color "0075CA" --description "Issues affecting the $SKILL_NAME skill" 2>/dev/null || true

Step 2: Fetch All Open Issues

gh issue list --state open --json number,title,body,labels --limit 100

Step 3: Tag Untagged Issues

For each issue that has NO skill:* label:

1. Show the issue title and first 3 lines of body
2. List available skills
3. Ask (in one message, not per-issue): suggest which skill this issue most likely affects based on the title/body, then confirm or let user override

Tagging options per issue:

• A specific skill from .claude/skills/ → apply skill:<name>
• Project-level → no skill tag (affects the agent as a whole, not a specific skill)
• Skip → leave untagged for now

Apply the label:

gh issue edit $NUMBER --add-label "skill:$SKILL_NAME"

Step 4: Check Priority Coverage

For each open issue without a priority:* label:

List them grouped:

### Issues missing priority labels (3)
| # | Title | Status |
|---|-------|--------|
| 12 | Fix claim flow | todo |

Offer to set priorities in batch: "Assign priorities? (p0/p1/p2 for each, or skip)"

gh issue edit $NUMBER --add-label "priority:$PRIORITY"

Step 5: Flag Stale In-Progress

gh issue list --label "status:in-progress" --state open --json number,title,updatedAt

For any in-progress issue not updated in the last 48 hours, flag it:

### Stale in-progress (1)
| # | Title | Last updated |
|---|-------|-------------|
| 7 | Update autoplan flow | 3 days ago |

Offer to move stale issues back to status:todo or add a check-in comment.

Step 6: Summary

## Groom Complete

- Tagged: X issues with skill labels
- Prioritized: Y issues
- Stale flagged: Z in-progress issues

Run `/roadmap` to see the skill-grouped view, or `/claim` to start the next issue.

Error Handling

Error	Action
No .claude/skills/ directory	Warn: "No skills found. Is this an agent repo?"
gh not authenticated	Tell user to run ! gh auth login
No open issues	Report "Backlog is empty — nothing to groom"
Label creation fails	Note and continue