Triage this project's findings

Turn existing evidence into concise project findings and supported backlog priorities, then deliver that maintenance result through the project's existing workflow. An explicit invocation authorizes its findings, canonical story and backlog edits, and their routine commit and synchronization to the established origin target. A user-invoked combined cycle that expressly names this phase and its project set passes the same authority to its selected project's invocation; accept the supplied project, target and maintenance/publication scope without a second permission question. Maintain only this invocation's established project.

Encountering findings during another task, a retrospective, a session startup, or a historical instruction grants no such authority. Do not collect from other projects, change published guidance, implement the selected improvements, or repair unrelated CI. Approved finding-code adoption has its own dough-maintain-findings contract; this skill does not allocate Open Dough catalog codes.

Resolve the project and records

Use the request and established project context, not a copied project name or the installed skill directory. Resolve independently:

• The target project root and this invocation's authority. A delegated combined cycle supplies the user's originating instruction and its selected project.
• The canonical DearDough.md location: the project's explicit location takes precedence over <project-root>/DearDough.md. Locate the existing project findings record from project guidance or supplied context. Keep an alternate filename; do not create a replacement just to standardize its name.
• The canonical backlog, seed/story naming and identity conventions, existing queued and Taken responses, and near-future direction when present. Load dough-product-backlog before dependent story or queue writes.
• The supplied evidence and relevant reported guidance/code revisions. Today's installation version does not establish what an earlier execution used.
• The intended origin remote and target branch, and the originating/default checkout when supplied. Resolve them from project or caller authority; this workflow supplies no fallback remote or branch.

Read existing records before proposing new ones. Missing or contradictory authority, record locations, evidence, canonical-home conventions or target selection stops only the dependent assessment, write or synchronization. Name the gap, preserve affected records and continue supported independent work. Do not search other repositories, invent a findings location or identity scheme, or claim synchronization without a target. A consequential unresolved choice goes to the user with its evidence and the specific decision needed.

Before the first write, apply maintenance workspace and delivery. Resolve paths and conventions in that owned checkout; the originating checkout's unrelated work stays there.

Establish responsibility before selecting a remedy

For each interpretable finding, distinguish the original observed facts from the current assessment. Inspect the failed responsibility and proposed remedy against the reported shared guidance, project-owned code/configuration/rules, and any local adaptation. Use decisive supplied evidence and only the relevant local source/history needed to settle the attribution.

• A shared contract or platform assumption that failed belongs in DearDough.md, even when observed in this project or avoidable by a local workaround. Do not create a local workaround story for that shared failure.
• A project implementation or adapter violating a sound shared contract belongs in the project's findings record. Preserve the contract and local evidence supporting that distinction.
• Separate supported local and shared facets of one execution. Retain the shared facet, move the local evidence once, and cross-reference their relationship. Count the execution once for each supported conclusion and once in any combined frequency used to rank a response.
• When responsibility remains uncertain, keep that uncertainty and distinct identity explicit. Similar symptoms, titles, remedies, or a mention of CI do not establish the same cause or ownership.

Correct an earlier classification in either direction when evidence supports it. Recheck each candidate story's remedy too: a correctly located finding can still produce an incorrectly owned response. Missing reported revision/history limits the assessment; do not infer continuity or a shared defect from today's source alone. Keep independently supported maintenance moving.

Preserve evidence while making the records concise

Use the project's existing finding identities and record conventions. Retain the problem and responsibility, distinct occurrences and their provenance, current assessment, response and actual adoption, observation criterion and relevant exposure, and disposition/recovery information when available. These are meanings to preserve in the existing records, not a required schema, new status store or archive. Leave unavailable facts qualified rather than filling them with assumptions.

When changing DearDough.md, reuse the provenance, occurrence-identity, high-water numbering, size counting/ceiling and recovery safeguards in record supported process findings. This explicit maintenance is a separately authorized disposition: the supported moves and compaction below do not require size pressure. This skill owns those edits and the owned checkout; do not import retrospective-only triggers, its ordinary append-only candidate-write procedure, or its preparation/keep flow. Preserve adopted codes and former-code aliases; do not rename existing codes merely because evidence moves between files.

Match by the same concrete problem and responsibility. Merge only when the evidence establishes that identity. Keep one canonical finding, former-code traceability and working incoming story/evidence links. Related problems can be grouped without merging their identities or asserting an unproved common cause.

Compact duplicate narrative into one current explanation and a concise recurrence summary. Retain distinct execution identities/counts, relevant dates/revisions, evidence locators, material conditions, severity, uncertainty, counterevidence and pre/post-fix boundaries. An execution copied into two records counts once. Missing execution provenance permits a qualified finding, not an invented countable occurrence. A rereview of the same event adds no row or count; decisive new evidence enriches that occurrence. Do not use review time as occurrence time or make an arbitrary line count the cleanup goal.

Before removing moved content, read back the destination and check its complete evidence, identity/aliases and links against the source. Retain concise source and recovery locators through existing project conventions or Git. If source recovery or preservation cannot be verified, keep the source content and report that incomplete move; do not leave a half-linked move reported as complete. Reconcile any concurrent record changes before saving instead of overwriting them. Keep historical observations distinct from the current explanation and preserve unrelated human notes and completed-response history.

Follow responses through observation and recurrence

When a finding has a claimed repair, prior response, observation or retirement, read follow fixes without losing evidence before deciding its current disposition. Use the same finding identity and evidence model above. Correct stale current assessments from attributable source/adoption evidence while preserving the original observations.

Retire only with supported repair/outcome evidence or a satisfied proportionate observation criterion with relevant use and no recurrence. Preserve recovery and working links before removing active content. Insufficient exposure or uncertain adoption remains open. A matching failure under the adopted repair restores its lineage and eligibility for selection; an old branch, unapplied repair or similar symptom alone cannot establish a failed fix.

Select zero to three new leading stories

Read active responses and their canonical homes before ranking uncovered work. Weigh distinct relevant occurrences, impact, current relevance, confidence, expected benefit, effort and product direction. A severe supported one-off can outrank frequent minor friction. More candidates do not raise the three-story ceiling; retain the unselected findings without manufacturing additional work.

For each supported project-owned problem:

• If a queued or Taken story already covers the remedy, report its existing identity and link. Leave that entry's membership and relative order unchanged; it is not one of this invocation's new stories.
• If new work is justified, select at most three improvements with a named beneficiary and evaluable outcome. Record the bounded problem, evidence, expected benefit, scope and key examples in canonical story homes using this project's conventions. Link each story to its finding and each finding to the story, explicitly queued rather than resolved. Do not create a plan or take the story as part of this maintenance.
• For a supported recurrence or uncovered remainder after a completed response, a new bounded follow-up may be justified. Link its new evidence, prior response and finding lineage; preserve the original completion and apply the same selection ceiling and priority criteria. Do not reopen the completed story or create another response when active work already covers it.
• Use the installed product-backlog writer to add only those new canonical stories first, in justified priority order. Preserve existing Taken entries, unrelated queue order and direction text. Allocate each new story's identity under allocate a new identity, and follow the writer's identity and genuine prerequisite rules; an unresolved priority/meaning conflict stops the affected selection rather than authorizing a direction change.

Fewer stories, including zero, is a complete selection result when everything is covered, already resolved, shared, unsupported or outside current priority. An unchanged repeat adds no occurrence, finding, story, alias or status note merely to record that the skill ran. A partial write names each saved destination and missing link; claim reciprocal linking only after all affected records have been verified.

Validate and deliver

Review resulting records against the source evidence: responsibility and remedy, preserved distinct executions and links, exact new story count/order, unchanged existing queue/Taken membership and relative order, and unchanged direction. For lifecycle changes, verify actual adoption/exposure, the retirement decision and recovery path, or restored lineage and prior-response links. Preserve the historical observations and completed responses when the current assessment changes. Run project-required checks appropriate to these metadata changes. Do not treat polished prose or a local commit as proof of a completed maintenance invocation.

Then complete maintenance workspace and delivery. Report the ownership reasons and meaningful record/queue changes briefly, plus uncertainties and any exact unfinished step. Distinguish remote acceptance, default-checkout refresh and workspace disposition. An unchanged result needs no empty commit; verify its existing remote state before reporting it synchronized.