Quickstart:

```bash
npx skills add mattpocock/skills --skill=triage
```

```bash
npx skills update triage
```

[Source](https://github.com/mattpocock/skills/tree/main/skills/engineering/triage)

## What it does

`triage` moves issues on your project's tracker through a small **state machine** of triage roles — categorise them, verify the claim, grill them into shape if needed, and leave a ready-for-agent brief.

The load-bearing constraint: it never labels blind. Every triaged item carries exactly one **category** role (`bug` / `enhancement`) and one **state** role (`needs-triage`, `needs-info`, `ready-for-agent`, `ready-for-human`, `wontfix`), and it *recommends and waits* — it tells you its category and state call with reasoning, then acts only on your direction. Before anything is promoted to `ready-for-agent`, it verifies the claim first: a bug gets reproduced, a PR gets checked out and run.

## When to reach for it

You invoke this by typing `/triage` and describing what you want in natural language — the agent won't reach for it on its own. "Show me anything that needs my attention", "let's look at #42", "move #42 to ready-for-agent".

Reach for it when your issue tracker has raw, unevaluated reports and you want them sorted, verified, and turned into work an agent or human can pick up. To turn a settled conversation into a fresh spec instead, use [to-prd](https://aihero.dev/skills-to-prd); to split an existing PRD into tickets, use [to-issues](https://aihero.dev/skills-to-issues). `triage` is the reverse direction — it processes what's *already* landed in the tracker.

## Prerequisites

`triage` reads and writes your issue tracker, so [setup-matt-pocock-skills](https://aihero.dev/skills-setup-matt-pocock-skills) must have configured the tracker and the label mapping first. The role names above are **canonical** — the actual label strings in your tracker may differ, and that mapping is what setup provides. The config also decides whether external PRs count as a request surface, and who counts as external.

## A PR is an issue with attached code

Where the tracker treats external pull requests as a request surface, `triage` runs them through the *same* machine: same category roles, same states, same transitions — the states just read against the diff instead of a report. `ready-for-agent` means a brief is attached and an agent should take the next step on the code; `ready-for-human` means it's ready to merge. Discovery surfaces only external PRs, but an explicitly named PR is always triaged regardless of author.

## Verify before you brief

The step that separates `triage` from ad-hoc labelling is verification. It reproduces the bug from the reporter's steps, or checks out the PR and runs the tests, and reports back: confirmed with a code path, failed, or insufficient detail (which is itself a strong `needs-info` signal). It also runs two codebase checks — **redundancy** (is this already implemented? then it's a `wontfix`) and **prior rejection** (does `.out-of-scope/` already say no?). A confirmed verification makes a far stronger agent brief; guessing does not.

## It's working if

- Every item it touches ends with exactly one category role and one state role — never zero, never two conflicting states.
- It hands you a recommendation with reasoning and waits, rather than relabelling on its own.
- Bugs get reproduced and PRs get run before anything reaches `ready-for-agent`.
- Every comment it posts to the tracker opens with the `> *This was generated by AI during triage.*` disclaimer.

## Where it fits

`triage` is the **periodic maintenance** pass over your issue tracker — run it whenever reports pile up, to keep the queue sorted and the `ready-for-agent` column trustworthy. It sits at the front of the tracker, upstream of the build chain: the briefs it writes are what [tdd](https://aihero.dev/skills-tdd) later picks up to implement. When a request needs sharpening it leans on [grilling](https://aihero.dev/skills-grilling) and [domain-modeling](https://aihero.dev/skills-domain-modeling) to grill it into shape one question at a time. Its close neighbour is [to-prd](https://aihero.dev/skills-to-prd), which populates the tracker from a fresh conversation where `triage` processes what's already there. When you're unsure which skill or flow fits, [ask-matt](https://aihero.dev/skills-ask-matt) routes you.