Issue Triage

Analyze open issues to identify priority, stale items, and cleanup candidates.

Variables

Set at session start:

export OWNER=<org-or-user>
export REPO=<repo-name>

When to Use

• Weekly issue grooming
• Before sprint planning
• When backlog grows too large

Auto-approved: All gh commands are read-only and auto-approved.

Analysis Steps

1. All Open Issues

gh issue list --repo $OWNER/$REPO --state open --limit 100 --json number,title,labels,createdAt,updatedAt,assignees,comments

2. Issues Without Attention (no assignee, no comments)

gh issue list --repo $OWNER/$REPO --state open --limit 100 --json number,title,assignees,comments --jq '.[] | select(.assignees | length == 0) | select(.comments == 0) | "#\(.number) \(.title)"'

3. Stale Issues (no update > 30 days)

gh issue list --repo $OWNER/$REPO --state open --limit 100 --json number,title,updatedAt --jq '.[] | select(.updatedAt < (now - 30*24*3600 | strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ"))) | "#\(.number) \(.title) (last: \(.updatedAt))"'

4. Blocking / High Priority

gh issue list --repo $OWNER/$REPO --state open --label "priority/critical,priority/high,blocking" --json number,title,labels

5. Security Issues

gh issue list --repo $OWNER/$REPO --state open --label "security" --json number,title,createdAt

Triage Report

## Issue Triage Report

### Needs Attention (no assignee, no comments): N
- [list]

### Stale (> 30 days no activity): N
- [list — consider closing or updating]

### Blocking / High Priority: N
- [list — needs immediate action]

### Candidates to Close
- [issues that are resolved, outdated, or duplicated]

Optionally Close or Comment

gh issue close <number> --repo $OWNER/$REPO --comment "Closing as resolved/outdated. See #<newer-issue> for updated version."

Troubleshooting

Problem: Label filters return nothing

Symptom: --label flag matches no issues. Fix: Labels are case-sensitive and repo-specific. Run gh label list --repo $OWNER/$REPO to see available labels, then adjust the filter.

Problem: Issues list exceeds --limit 100

Symptom: Repo has 100+ open issues and results are truncated. Fix: Use --limit 500 or paginate with --jq 'length' first to check total count.

Related Skills

• github:last-week - Weekly summary including issues
• github:prs - PR health analysis
• repo:issue - Create properly formatted issues