Issue Triage Module — Skill

Purpose

Audit and triage open issues to surface what needs attention. Identify stale, unlabeled, or resolved issues and keep the issue tracker healthy.

Execution Order

Runs as module #5 during full assessments (after PR Management). Cross-references merged PRs from PR Management to identify issues that may be resolved but not yet closed.

Helper Commands

# List open issues (excludes PRs)
gh-manager issues list --repo owner/name

# Get full issue details with linked PRs
gh-manager issues get --repo owner/name --issue 12

# Get comments (for dedup marker checking)
gh-manager issues comments --repo owner/name --issue 12

# Actions (all require owner approval)
gh-manager issues label --repo owner/name --issue 12 --add "bug,priority-high"
gh-manager issues comment --repo owner/name --issue 12 --body "Activity check..."
gh-manager issues close --repo owner/name --issue 12 --body "Resolved by PR #15" --reason completed
gh-manager issues close --repo owner/name --issue 8 --reason not_planned
gh-manager issues assign --repo owner/name --issue 12 --assignees "username"

Full assessment mode: Do not output the 📋 Issue Triage banner during a full assessment. Collect findings and feed them into the unified 📊 view. Use the per-module banner format only for narrow issue checks.

Assessment Flow

Step 1: Fetch All Open Issues

gh-manager issues list --repo owner/name --state open

If no open issues, report clean:

No open issues — issue tracker is all clear.

Step 2: Triage Each Issue

For issues that need deeper inspection (stale, unlabeled, high comment count), fetch full details:

gh-manager issues get --repo owner/name --issue N

Assess each issue on:

Staleness: Days since updated_at. Compare against tier staleness threshold. Skip issues with long-term or backlog labels (configurable via ignore_labels).

Labels: Are any labels applied? If require_labels is true (default), flag unlabeled issues. Suggest labels based on issue title and body content analysis.

Assignees: Is anyone assigned? Unassigned issues on active repos may need attention.

Linked PRs: Does the issue have linked PRs (from linked_prs in the get response)? If a linked PR was merged, the issue may be resolved.

Milestones: Is the issue assigned to a milestone? Note if milestone is overdue.

Step 3: Classify Issues

Likely resolved: Has a linked PR that's merged — may need closing. Stale: Exceeds staleness threshold, no recent activity. Unlabeled: No labels applied (if require_labels is configured). Unassigned: No assignee on an active repo. Active: Recent activity, properly labeled and assigned.

Step 4: Present Findings

After presenting findings with ≥2 action-relevant details, apply the progressive depth offer once per findings block (Communication Principle #7 in the core skill; skip for advanced owners).

📋 Issue Triage — ha-light-controller

Likely resolved (1): • Issue #12 "Light doesn't turn off" — linked PR #15 was merged 3 days ago

Stale (2): • Issue #5 "Add color temperature support" — 45 days idle, no assignee • Issue #8 "Docs unclear on setup" — 30 days idle, labeled "enhancement"

Unlabeled (1): • Issue #19 "Crash on startup" — opened 2 days ago, no labels Suggested labels: bug, priority-high (based on title/content)

Active (3): • Issue #20, #21, #22 — all recently updated, properly triaged

Issue #12 looks resolved — linked PR #15 was merged 3 days ago.

Use AskUserQuestion for resolved issues (can batch if multiple):

"Close N resolved issue(s)" (recommended) — close with a note linking to the merged PR
"Leave them open" — owner will close manually
"Mark as won't fix instead" — close with not_planned reason

Actions (Owner Approval Required)

Close Resolved Issues

When a linked PR has been merged, close with a note:

gh-manager issues close --repo owner/name --issue 12 --body "Resolved by PR #15. Closing this issue.

*Closed by GitHub Repo Manager*" --reason completed

Partial approval: If the owner specifies only some issues to close (e.g., "close 12 and 19 but not 5"), close only those and note what was skipped:

✅ Closed: Issue #12, #19
⏭ Skipped: Issue #5 (owner decision — left open)

Label Suggestions

When suggesting labels for unlabeled issues, analyze the title and body:

Keywords like "crash", "error", "broken" → suggest bug
Keywords like "feature", "add", "support" → suggest enhancement
Keywords like "docs", "documentation", "readme" → suggest documentation
Urgency words like "critical", "urgent", "blocking" → suggest a priority label

Present the suggestion and use AskUserQuestion to confirm:

Issue #19 "Crash on startup" — based on content I'd suggest bug and priority-high.

Options:

"Apply bug + priority-high" — apply the suggested labels now
"Pick different labels" — I'll list available labels for manual selection
"Skip labeling this issue" — move on without labeling

# On approval of suggested labels:
gh-manager issues label --repo owner/name --issue 19 --add "bug,priority-high"

Post Activity Checks on Stale Issues

Check for existing dedup markers first:

gh-manager issues comments --repo owner/name --issue 5

Search for . If not found:

gh-manager issues comment --repo owner/name --issue 5 --body "<!-- gh-manager:activity-check -->
👋 This issue has been idle for 45 days. Is it still relevant?

If this is a long-term item, add the \`backlog\` label and I won't flag it again.

*Posted by GitHub Repo Manager*"

Close Stale Issues (Not Planned)

⚠️ On Tier 3/4 (public repos): closing an issue is publicly visible — external contributors will see a "closed as not planned" status. For issues opened by external contributors, consider posting an activity check comment first rather than closing directly.

For issues the owner wants to close as stale:

gh-manager issues close --repo owner/name --issue 8 --body "Closing due to inactivity. Feel free to reopen if this is still relevant.

*Closed by GitHub Repo Manager*" --reason not_planned

Assign Issues

Assigning an issue adds the specified user to the "Assignees" field — publicly visible on the issue and signals who's responsible for addressing it. On public repos, the assignee will receive a notification.

gh-manager issues assign --repo owner/name --issue 12 --assignees "owner-username"

Cross-Module Interactions

With PR Management

If PR Management found merged PRs that reference issues ("fixes #12"), pass those to Issue Triage as "likely resolved"
Avoid surfacing the same PR-issue link in both modules

With Security

If Security found Dependabot alerts that have associated issues, note them to avoid duplicate surfacing
Security-related issues should be flagged with appropriate severity

Configurable Policies

Setting	Default	Description
`staleness_threshold_days`	`auto` (tier default)	Days idle before flagging
`require_labels`	`true`	Flag unlabeled issues
`ignore_labels`	`["long-term", "backlog"]`	Issues with these labels skip staleness

Error Handling

Error	Response
403 on label/close	"I can't modify issues on this repo. Check that your PAT has Issues write access."
410 on issue (transferred)	"This issue was transferred to another repo."
Timeline API unavailable	"I couldn't check for linked PRs on this issue. The timeline API may require additional permissions."

issue-triage