lbussell/triaging-issues

Important: This skill is informational only. Do not modify issues, apply labels, assign users, post comments, or close issues.

Workflow

Step 1: List untriaged issues

gh issue list --label untriaged

Step 2: Investigate each issue

For each untriaged issue, gather its full context:

• Issue details: gh issue view <number>
• Comments: gh issue view <number> --comments
• Related PRs: Check if any open or recently merged PRs reference the issue.

Step 3: Correlate with recent activity

• Check recent pull requests: gh pr list --state all
• Check recent issues: gh issue list --state all

Look for:

• Is there an open or recently merged PR that fixes this issue?
• Is this a duplicate of an existing issue?
• Is this related to a known pipeline or infrastructure failure?

Step 4: Categorize and present results

Place each issue into one of these categories (in this priority order):

1. 🔷 Customer Issue — A product issue affecting users or customers, not an infrastructure or pipeline problem. These follow a separate triage process.
2. 🟢 Ready for Work — Well-defined problem with a known or straightforward root cause. Can be picked up and worked on immediately.
3. 🔍 Needs Investigation — Looks valid but needs reproduction, root-cause analysis, more information from the reporter, or further research before work can begin.
4. ✅ Already Addressed — Likely fixed by a recent PR or commit, is a duplicate of another issue, or is no longer relevant. Can probably be closed.

Use your judgment when things are ambiguous. For example:

• An issue describing unexpected behavior in a published image from an end-user's perspective is a Customer Issue, even if the root cause turns out to be infrastructure.
• An auto-generated publish-result issue from pipeline infrastructure is not a customer issue — categorize based on its actionability.
• An issue that has a linked merged PR but hasn't been closed yet is likely Already Addressed.
• An issue with a clear error message and obvious fix is Ready for Work, even if no one has reproduced it yet.

For each issue, include:

• Issue number and title
• Category with emoji
• A brief summary of what the issue is about
• Why you chose that category
• Suggested next step (e.g., "investigate root cause", "verify fix in PR #123", "needs repro steps from reporter")

End with a recommended prioritization of which issues to tackle first.