/backlog

Backlog health at a glance.

Objective

Quick assessment of backlog state. Stats, staleness, priority distribution, readiness scores. Standalone — usable outside /groom.

Process

1. Fetch Issues

gh issue list --state open --limit 200 --json number,title,labels,body,createdAt,updatedAt,milestone,assignees

2. Compute Stats

Metric	How
Total open	Count of open issues
By priority	Count per p0/p1/p2/p3/unlabeled
By horizon	Count per now/next/later/blocked/unlabeled
By type	Count per bug/feature/task/refactor/research/epic
By domain	Count per domain/* label
Assigned vs unassigned	Count with/without assignees
With milestone vs without	Count with/without milestone

3. Staleness Report

Flag issues by staleness:

Stale (>90 days since last update, no blocked label)
Aging (60-90 days since last update)
Orphaned (no labels beyond source/*)
Unlabeled priority (missing p0-p3)

# Issues not updated in 90+ days
gh issue list --state open --json number,title,updatedAt,labels | \
  jq '[.[] | select((.updatedAt | fromdateiso8601) < (now - 7776000))]'

4. Readiness Distribution

Run /issue lint --all scoring (lightweight — just parse issue bodies, don't spawn sub-agents). Report distribution:

Readiness Distribution:
  90-100 (Excellent):  4 issues  ████
  70-89  (Good):       8 issues  ████████
  50-69  (Needs work): 3 issues  ███
  0-49   (Incomplete): 5 issues  █████

5. Label Hygiene

Check for:

Legacy labels that need migration
Issues with multiple priority labels
Issues with no type label
Issues missing horizon label

Output

BACKLOG HEALTH: {repo}
======================

Overview:
  Total open: 20
  Ready for execution (score >= 70): 12 (60%)
  Needs enrichment (score 50-69): 3 (15%)
  Incomplete (score < 50): 5 (25%)

Priority Distribution:
  P0 (Critical):   1  █
  P1 (Essential):  5  █████
  P2 (Important):  8  ████████
  P3 (Nice to Have): 4  ████
  Unlabeled:       2  ██

Horizon Distribution:
  now:     3  ███
  next:    7  ███████
  later:   8  ████████
  blocked: 1  █
  None:    1  █

Staleness:
  Stale (>90d): #12, #15, #18
  Aging (60-90d): #22
  Orphaned (no labels): #31

Label Issues:
  Missing priority: #31, #33
  Missing type: #31
  Legacy labels: #15 (priority/p0 → p0)

Recommendations:
  1. Close or update 3 stale issues
  2. Enrich 5 incomplete issues (/issue lint --all --fix)
  3. Migrate 1 legacy label
  4. Add priority to 2 unlabeled issues

/issue lint — Detailed per-issue scoring
/groom — Phase 1 calls /backlog for quick assessment
/tidy — Automated backlog cleanup

backlog