standards/guides/triage.md

Triage — drain this project's inbox items into the right place

You are running inside one project repo. Your job is to take the items in the cross-project inbox that belong to this repo and route each one to where it actually lives — then clear it from the inbox. This is the deliberate, with-context counterpart to /capture: capture is dumb and uniform, triage is where the judgment happens. Routing decisions are the user's call — propose, don't impose.

The inbox is ~/Projects/standards/INBOX.md. This repo is identified by its current working directory's folder name (and AGENTS.md/README.md if you need to confirm the name).

Procedure

1. Gather. Read ~/Projects/standards/INBOX.md. Select the unchecked items whose (project) tag matches this repo's folder name. Also surface any (?) items and ask the user whether each belongs to this repo — don't assume. Never select (new) or (new:…) items — those are proposed new repos, not work for this one; if any exist, note them in your report as awaiting the new-repo bootstrap, but leave them in the inbox. If there are no matching items, say so and stop.
2. Orient. Read this repo's AGENTS.md (especially ## Current state) and ROADMAP.md (if present) so your routing proposals fit what's already there and you can spot duplicates of items already tracked.
3. Propose a routing for each item. Present them as a short list, each with a proposed destination and a one-line reason. The destinations:
   • ## Current state in AGENTS.md — near-term, act-on-it-now items (high priority, active work, a bug to fix this session).
   • ROADMAP.md — longer-term backlog (features, ideas, deferred work). Create ROADMAP.md if it doesn't exist and there's anything to put there.
   • A docs/guides/<topic>.md (or this repo's equivalent guide location) — if the item is durable subsystem guidance rather than a task.
   • Escalate to the standards repo — if the item is really a cross-repo idea (a new command/agent/standard), it belongs in the standards ROADMAP.md or stays in the inbox tagged (standards), not in this project. Flag these; don't force them into the project.
   • Discard — already done, duplicate, or no longer wanted. Say why. Let the captured priority (Pn) inform the destination but use judgment — a P1 bug goes to Current state, a P3 idea to ROADMAP.
4. Get approval. Wait for the user to confirm or adjust the routing. Do not edit any file before they approve — these are their durable project files.
5. Apply. Make the approved edits to this repo's files (keep ## Current state lean — present tense, ~15 lines max per the close-out convention; if it overflows, push older items to ROADMAP). Then remove the triaged items from ~/Projects/standards/INBOX.md — delete the lines outright (the git history is the record); leave untriaged and other-repo items untouched.
6. Commit. Two repos changed — present the proposed commit message(s) for both and wait for the user to confirm before committing or pushing anything (the same gate as step 4): this project's AGENTS.md/ROADMAP changes, and the standards repo's INBOX.md (git -C ~/Projects/standards …). Follow how-i-work.md for messages and the no-AI-attribution rule.
7. Report what landed where, what was discarded, and any items escalated to the standards repo that the user still needs to handle there.

The portable inbox-check line

So pending items surface automatically at the start of a session (not only when the user remembers to run /triage), every project repo's AGENTS.md should carry this line — it's vendor-neutral, so any harness that reads AGENTS.md honors it:

Inbox check: At session start, if ~/Projects/standards/INBOX.md exists, scan it for items tagged (this-repo) and surface them before proposing next steps; triage with /triage.

If this repo's AGENTS.md lacks that line, offer to add it as part of the triage.

Rules

• Never invent items or routings. If an item is ambiguous, ask.
• Never edit a project file before the user approves the routing.
• If you cannot read ~/Projects/standards/INBOX.md, stop and report precisely that — do not guess what was captured.