Personal Triage

The personal sibling of the dev

triage

skill. It grooms raw items on the Personal Linear board (team key

JEG

) from

Triage

into a clear, classified, prioritized

Ready for Pickup

state, so a deep-work session only ever starts work that is already understood. Dev machinery (agent briefs, bug repro, Ready-for-Agent) is deliberately absent. For actual software projects it hands off to the dev

/triage

flow and gets out of the way.

You (James) are the only reporter, so there is no needs-info-from-reporter loop: when an item is unclear, grill the user directly and capture the answers on the card.

Every comment this skill posts MUST start with:

> *This was generated by AI during personal triage.*

Tracker

The board is the Personal Linear team (key

JEG

), via the Linear MCP (

list_issues

get_issue

save_issue

save_comment

list_comments

, loaded via ToolSearch). This skill only ever acts on the Personal team. For dev work it hands off (see Apps below) and never edits the dev board itself.

Board vocabulary

Status = pipeline stage (columns). Personal triage works the left end:

```
Triage
```
: raw, needs grooming. The input.
```
Ready for Pickup
```
: groomed and ready to start. The main output.
```
In Progress
```
/
```
In Review
```
/
```
Done
```
: you own these; triage does not move them.
```
Backlog
```
: someday/maybe, kept but not now.
```
Canceled
```
: dropped (with a one-line why).
```
Duplicate
```
: folded into another card.

Kind = what sort of thing it is (exactly one label):

engineering

Task

Learning

Research

Errand

Admin

notes

engineering

means dev work (software, skills, repos, tooling). It doubles as the routing signal to the dev side. Existing-project work hands off to the dev flow and is not groomed here; a new app idea is the exception — flesh it out in the card, then park it in

Backlog

(see Apply the outcome).

notes

means zettelkasten note work (processing, linking, atomizing); these are run with

/link-your-thoughts

Priority = native Urgent / High / Medium / Low, default Medium. Re-read for personal life (it will not map exactly, and that is fine): Urgent = a hard external deadline this week; High = a real consequence if it slips; Medium = the default; Low = nice-to-have. Set one by the time a card leaves

Triage

Topic tags (optional, layered on top of the kind). A card may also carry a domain/topic label that is not a kind, e.g.

investing

(investing-domain work: research, analysis tools, checklist/mental-model skills). Apply these in addition to the one kind label, never instead of it.

A groomed card carries exactly one kind label, optionally one or more topic tags, a priority, and lands in exactly one status.

Show what needs attention

Query the Personal board and present, oldest first:

Untriaged: in
```
Triage
```
with no kind label.
```
Triage
```
cards with grooming already in progress (notes present).

Show a one-line summary per card and let the user pick which to work.

Triage one item

Gather context. Read the card (title, description, comments, prior notes). If it points at a repo or skill (e.g.
```
munger/models.md
```
, the VPS crons), pull quick context from there so you do not ask what you can already find.
Recommend. State your kind + priority + outcome with reasoning. Wait for direction.
Grill if vague. If it is a fuzzy one-liner, ask focused questions one at a time until you know what it is and what "done" looks like. Capture the answers into the card description as you go.
Apply the outcome:
- Ready for Pickup: write a short brief into the description (What this is / Done means / First action), set the kind label and priority, move to
```
Ready for Pickup
```
  .
- engineering, existing project (hand off): if the work belongs to a repo/board that already exists (e.g. Docket dev work), confirm it is represented there (
```
/triage
```
  on that board), link the dev board or issue from the personal card, then close the personal card with a comment pointing across. No permanent double-tracking. Close as
```
Done
```
  when the dev side is already complete (a sign-off card);
```
Canceled
```
  when it is purely a stray pointer with nothing to track.
- engineering, new app idea (flesh out, then park): there is no board for not-yet-started apps, and standing up an empty repo per idea is wasteful. So when an app idea has life, flesh it out in the card itself during triage — grill the user one question at a time and capture: what it is, the spark (why it is interesting, in their words), the core mechanic, an MVP direction, and open questions for the dev brainstorm. Then label
```
engineering
```
  , set a priority, and move it to
```
Backlog
```
  . It waits there, understood and preserved, until the user commits to building it; at that point the handoff is
```
/startup
```
  (stand up the repo + board, which kicks off the brainstorm/grill), then
```
/triage
```
  . Note this handoff path in the card so it is not lost.
- Someday/maybe: move to
```
Backlog
```
  .
- Drop: move to
```
Canceled
```
  with a one-line why.
- Needs your decision: leave in
```
Triage
```
  , post the open question as a comment.
- Duplicate: move to
```
Duplicate
```
  , link the original.

Quick override

If the user says "move JEG-7 to Ready for Pickup" or "drop JEG-9", trust them: confirm the change (status, label, comment, close), then apply it. Skip grilling.

Definition of groomed

A card is

Ready for Pickup

when it has: a kind label, a priority, a one-line definition of done, and a clear first action. That is the whole bar. A full spec is only for

engineering

items, which get one on the dev side via

/startup

/grill-with-docs

Pairs with

The dev
```
triage
```
/
```
engineer
```
/
```
reviewer
```
flow, which owns anything labelled
```
engineering
```
once it has been handed off.

personal-triage

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content