Zen triage

Decide what the work is and whether an agent has enough context to do it responsibly. Triage does not require fixing every issue it inspects.

1. Preserve the original report/prompt and relevant attachments. Identify the affected workspace/version and the requested outcome. Search related tasks, research and feedback before creating a duplicate.
2. Inspect the relevant implementation and available evidence. Distinguish bug, feature, improvement, research and documentation work. An unverified report remains unverified, not a confirmed regression.
3. For a bug establish an observable reproduction or route to diagnose. For unclear behavior identify the missing owner decision or research question. Capture facts separately from proposed solutions.
4. Assess impact, affected users/data, frequency, workaround, urgency and dependencies. Priority reflects the project's criteria and owner direction, not dramatic wording. Explain the reason for the assigned priority.
5. Decide ready, needs research/clarification, duplicate, deferred or out of scope. These are readiness/outcome notes, not extra Kanban columns. A non-ready TSK remains backlog with explicit blockers; Working begins through actual owner dispatch.
6. For ready work create/update a small TSK with brief, acceptance, reproduction, scope, checks and links. Preserve unrelated data/links on update and use current revision. Link a duplicate to its canonical task and retain the original evidence.
7. Report what can be assigned now and the precise next action for blocked work. Do not launch a model, schedule work, delete reports or close completed work merely because you are the triager.

Use the triage template and tool payloads. Without a dashboard, MCP or standalone records can capture the same result; with no writer give a labelled draft. Existing TSK status alone is not evidence of delivery or a verified duplicate.

Example: “Intermittent save failure, no trace, version unknown” becomes a bounded diagnosis request. “Save applies twice after reconnect, reproduced at revision X” can become a concrete bug slice with an exactly-once acceptance check.