PAIR-code / PAIR-code/deliberate-lab
agents(skills): add issue-triage skill for maintainer issue classification and hygiene
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- TypeScript
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Description
Problem
Deliberate Lab receives bug reports, feature requests, and meta-tooling proposals from a diverse set of contributors, researchers, and maintainers. Across the backlog of open issues:
- Over 80% lack Conventional Commit prefixes or scopes, using unstructured phrases (e.g. "Agents will skip the stage without answering questions").
- Issues frequently lack ADR 0004 layer labels (
runtime:*,area:*), or carry legacy catch-all labels likeprocess. - Issue titles authored by AI coding agents frequently suffer from prefix drift (e.g. using
feat(skills)orfix(build)rather thanagents(skills)orbuild(lint)). - Descriptions often omit key context needed for implementation (e.g. whether a bug touches participant UX vs. experimenter UX, reproduction steps, or edge-case expectations).
Currently, maintainers must manually read each issue, mentally map it against repository taxonomy, construct conventional titles, and apply labels by hand via separate terminal commands.
Proposed Solution
Introduce a dedicated issue-triage pairing skill (.agents/skills/issue-triage/SKILL.md) that equips an AI agent to inspect and triage any GitHub issue on command.
1. Invocation
Trigger phrases:
- "Let's triage issue "
- "Triage issue "
- "Audit issue "
2. The 4-Point Triage Rubric
Upon invocation, the agent inspects the issue losslessly using gh-issue-view.sh (per ADR 0003) and evaluates it against four standardized criteria:
- Architectural Layer Classification (ADR 0004):
- Identifies which of the 6 repository layers the issue touches:
- Product/Runtime:
runtime:participant-ux,runtime:experimenter-ux,runtime:agents,runtime:backend - Developer/Operational:
area:workspace,area:git,area:build,area:test,area:ci-deploy
- Product/Runtime:
- Identifies which of the 6 repository layers the issue touches:
- Conventional Title & Prefix Hygiene (#1258):
- Transforms unstructured or misnamed titles into canonical
type(scope): description. - Enforces runtime gating:
feat:andfix:reserved strictly for user-facing product runtime. - Enforces developer tooling types:
agents(...)for skills/workspace/decisions,build(...)for lint/build,chore(...)for repo-wide governance.
- Transforms unstructured or misnamed titles into canonical
- Label Applicability & Audit:
- Recommends labels to add (e.g. specific
area:*orruntime:*tags). - Recommends legacy or conflicting labels to remove (e.g. retiring generic
process).
- Recommends labels to add (e.g. specific
- Clarity, Completeness & Repro Audit:
- Evaluates whether problem statement, reproduction steps, expected behavior, and scope are clear.
- Formulates targeted clarifying questions for the author if critical details or edge cases are underspecified.
3. Mandatory Human Authorization Gate
- The skill presents a compact, formatted triage summary with the proposed title and label diff.
- The agent strictly waits for explicit maintainer approval before executing any mutations (
gh issue edit,gh issue comment). - When approved, updates are applied in a single shot.
Related Context
- ADR 0003 (
0003-agent-tooling-output-standards.md) - ADR 0004 (
0004-repository-layer-taxonomy.md) - #1247 (Maintainer PR evaluation protocol)
- #1258 (Adoption of
agents(...)Conventional Commit prefix)
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Create .agents/skills/issue-triage/SKILL.md and first read ADR 0003, ADR 0004, #1247, and #1258. Use the stated gh-issue-view.sh workflow and document the four-point rubric, invocation phrases, and human authorization gate before gh issue edit or gh issue comment. Done means the skill produces a compact title and label diff, asks clarification questions when needed, and waits for explicit approval before mutations.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- github, markdown
- Domain
- developer-experience, tooling
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Active
- Clarity
- Clearly specified
- Newbie friendliness
- 72/100