WTF Should I Do — Triage & Action Plan

WTF Should I Do — Triage & Action Plan

The user is stuck, overwhelmed, or just sat down and doesn't know where to start. Assess the situation and give them a concrete action plan.

Procedure

1. Assess the current state. If $ARGUMENTS describe the situation or point to something specific (a PR, a branch, a project), start there and gather context accordingly. Otherwise, run a quick local reconnaissance: git status, recent changes, failing tests, error output in the conversation — whatever's relevant.

2. Identify all the problems. Catalog everything that needs attention:

   • Build/test failures
   • Merge conflicts
   • Uncommitted work that might be lost
   • Stale branches
   • TODO items or known issues
   • Whatever the user mentioned in $ARGUMENTS

3. Triage and prioritize. Not all problems are equal:

   • Blocking: Things that prevent any other work (build failures, merge conflicts)
   • Urgent: Things that will get worse if ignored (uncommitted work, failing tests)
   • Important: Things that matter but can wait (refactoring, tech debt)
   • Noise: Things that look scary but aren't actually problems

4. Deliver the action plan:

Action Plan Format

**Situation Assessment:** [One sentence — how bad is it, really?]

**The Triage:**

1. [BLOCKING] [First thing to fix — with specific command or action]
2. [URGENT] [Second priority — concrete next step]
3. [IMPORTANT] [Can wait but shouldn't wait long]
4. [NOISE] [Things to ignore for now, and why]

**Start Here:** [The literal first command to run or action to take]

Guidelines

• Be concrete. "Fix the tests" is not an action item. "Run pytest tests/test_auth.py — the fixture is missing a mock" is.
• Prioritize by dependency. If test B fails because of test A's failure, only list test A.
• If the situation is actually fine and the user is overthinking it, say so plainly. "You're one git add away from being done" is more useful than a triage list.
• Don't over-triage. If there's only one problem, don't manufacture a list. "There's one thing wrong and here's how to fix it" is a great action plan.