Content Triage

Intelligence for managing the read-it-later lifecycle. Helps users process their inbox efficiently, make good keep/archive/delete decisions, and maintain a sustainable reading queue.

The Read-It-Later Lifecycle

Saved (new) --> Later (queued for reading) --> Archive (completed/processed)
     |                    |
     +--> Delete          +--> Delete

Items enter as new (inbox). Triage moves them to later (committed to read), archive (processed/done), or deletes them.

Triage Decision Framework

Quick Assessment Criteria

For each inbox item, evaluate:

1. Relevance: Does this relate to current projects, interests, or goals?

   • High: Directly relevant to active work
   • Medium: Generally interesting or useful background
   • Low: Tangential or outdated

2. Timeliness: Is this time-sensitive?

   • Urgent: News, announcements, deadlines
   • Evergreen: Reference material, tutorials, research
   • Stale: Old news, resolved discussions

3. Effort: How much time would this take to consume?

   • Quick read: < 5 minutes (articles, short posts)
   • Medium: 5-20 minutes (longer articles, papers)
   • Deep: > 20 minutes (books, long-form, technical papers)

4. Action potential: Will you actually do something with this?

   • High: Will inform a decision, feed into work, or change behavior
   • Low: "Nice to know" but no concrete use

Decision Matrix

Relevance	Timeliness	Action	Decision
High	Any	High	Later (priority)
High	Any	Low	Later
Medium	Urgent	Any	Later
Medium	Evergreen	High	Later
Medium	Evergreen	Low	Archive or delete
Medium	Stale	Any	Archive or delete
Low	Any	Any	Delete

Batch Triage Workflow

When triaging multiple items:

1. Group by category: Articles together, tweets together, PDFs together
2. Quick scan: Title + summary is usually enough for a decision
3. Apply tags: Tag items during triage to organize for later retrieval
4. Set reading order: Higher-priority items get later, lower priority get archived with tags

Inbox Health Metrics

A healthy inbox means:

• Size: Under 50 items (over 100 is overwhelmed)
• Age: No items older than 2 weeks (they're stale)
• Ratio: Saving fewer items than you process (inbox trending down)

When presenting triage results, surface these metrics:

Inbox health:
- Size: [N] items ([healthy/growing/overwhelming])
- Oldest item: [date] ([age])
- This week: +[saved] / -[processed]

Triage Patterns

The "Two-Minute Rule"

If you can decide in under 2 minutes whether to keep it, decide now. Don't defer decisions on obvious keeps or deletes.

The "Batch by Category" Pattern

Process all articles first, then all tweets, then all PDFs. Context-switching between types is costly.

The "Tag and Release" Pattern

For items you might need someday: tag them descriptively, then archive. They're findable via search but out of your active queue.