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.
- 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.
- Inspect the relevant implementation and available evidence. Distinguish bug, feature, improvement, research and documentation work. An unverified report remains unverified, not a confirmed regression.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.