Backlog

/backlog — Daily Backlog Management

Two modes: full daily review (default) or add single entry from URL (when a URL is provided).

Backlog Location

File: /Users/meain/.local/share/sbdb/Backlog/Backlog.md Sections: Today, Tomorrow, This Week, Weekend, Next Week, Whenever, Ongoing, and dated "Before" sections.

Mode A: Add Entry from URL

When given a URL, classify the source, fetch content, and add a task to the backlog.

Step 1: Classify

Step 2: Fetch Content

• Teams: Use MS365 MCP read_resource with URI teams:///teams/{groupId}/channels/{channelId}/messages/{messageId}. Extract sender name, message body.
• Jira: jira issue view PROJ-123 --plain — extract summary, status, assignee, type.
• GitHub PR: gh pr view <url> --json title,author,body,state
• GitHub issue: gh issue view <url> --json title,author,body,state
• incident.io: Use incident.io MCP tools (alert_show or incident_show).

Step 3: Compose Entry

Format: - [ ] <concise description> [ref](<original-url>)

Guidelines:

• Keep description short — a few words, enough to identify the task. No inline rationale or detail.
• If more context is needed, create a task note and link it with a wiki-link instead of expanding the description.
• Include person's first name if someone is asking/assigning something
• Jira: Fix auth token storage bug [DP-1234](url)
• GitHub PR: Review [repo#number](url): summary
• Teams: Review topic from Name [ref](url)
• Use [x] for completed or won't-do items. Never use [-] or any other checkbox state.

Step 4: Add to Backlog

Use /vault skill to add to the specified section (default: Today). If unavailable, directly edit Backlog.md — find the target section heading and insert at the end of that section.

Mode B: Full Daily Review

Collaboratively update the Today section of the backlog by pulling data from external sources and working with the user to decide what's realistic.

Step 0: Verify Today's Date

Always run date "+%Y-%m-%d (%A)" and treat its output as authoritative.

Monday cleanup: /Users/meain/.local/share/ignored-prs-for-review.yaml is a YAML file with three top-level list keys: prs (specific PR path fragments, e.g. owner/repo/pull/123), repos (bare repo names — blocks every PR from that repo), and people (author logins — blocks every PR by that person). Only the prs list resolves to real PRs, so Monday cleanup only touches that section — leave repos and people entries untouched.

If today is Monday, extract just the prs entries and check each one's state:

awk '/^prs:/{f=1;next} /^[a-zA-Z_]+:/{f=0} f' /Users/meain/.local/share/ignored-prs-for-review.yaml | sed -E 's/^[[:space:]]*- //'

For each non-empty result line:

export GIT_DIR=$(jj git root 2>/dev/null || echo .git)
result=$(gh pr view "https://github.com/$prpath" --json state 2>&1)
state=$(echo "$result" | grep -o 'OPEN\|MERGED\|CLOSED')

(use a variable name other than path — zsh aliases lowercase path to $PATH, and overwriting it breaks every subsequent command in the shell).

Remove any prs entries where state is not OPEN (merged, closed, or unknown/deleted), rewriting only that list in the YAML file — leave repos and people untouched. Report how many were pruned.

Step 1: Read Backlog

Read the full backlog file first.

Step 2: Handle Checked-Off Items

Note the checked-off items from Today — they will be archived to Before during Step 5. Format: ### YYYY-MM-DD (DayOfWeek). Get the date with:

~/.agents/skills/backlog/scripts/date-before.sh

Insert the new date block at the end (bottom) of the Before section — Before is chronologically ascending (oldest at top, newest at bottom).

Step 3: Gather External Data (parallel)

All Jira and GitHub commands must be run with dangerouslyDisableSandbox: true — the sandbox blocks TLS certificate verification needed for these hosts.

3a. Jira sprint:

jira issue list -q "sprint in openSprints() AND assignee = currentUser()" --raw 2>&1

Returns JSON array with raw Jira issue data. Parse with jq to extract key, status, summary.

Also fetch the sprint end date for the "This Cycle" section header:

jira sprint list --project DP | awk '/active/ {print $6}' | head -1

Returns a date like 2026-06-29. Use it in the section header as ### This Cycle (ends YYYY-MM-DD). If the backlog already has a "This Cycle" header with a different date, update it to reflect the current sprint.

3b. GitHub PRs — pending reviews:

~/.agents/skills/backlog/scripts/pending-prs.sh

Returns JSON array of PRs where user is a direct reviewer (not via team), excluding approved PRs, drafts, and Veeam-VDC/vdc-shared-data-plane PRs (never surface data-plane PRs — not the user's area). Also exclude dependabot PRs from Veeam-VDC repos — they are auto-reviewed and merged.

After fetching, filter out ignored PRs/repos/people. Flatten the YAML blocklist to one pattern per line, then filter the one-PR-per-line JSON with grep -vFf:

~/.agents/skills/backlog/scripts/pending-prs.sh | jq -c '.[]' | grep -vFf <(grep -E '^[[:space:]]*- ' /Users/meain/.local/share/ignored-prs-for-review.yaml | sed -E 's/^[[:space:]]*- //')

Apply the same flatten-and-filter pattern (jq per-line, then grep -vFf against the flattened YAML) whenever filtering PR lists in this skill, including the meain/* repos list in 3b-ii.

3b-ii. PRs from meain/ repos needing review:* Open PRs in repos owned by the meain GitHub org (user's personal projects where others open PRs):

GIT_DIR=$(jj git root 2>/dev/null || echo .git) gh search prs --state=open --owner=meain --json number,title,url,repository,updatedAt,isDraft,author 2>&1

Include all non-draft PRs not authored by meain. Filter out ignored PRs/repos/authors using the same flatten-and-filter pattern as 3b. Surface these in a separate "meain/* repos" subsection of the candidates file.

3c. PRs authored by user: Open PRs authored by the user across Veeam-VDC org.

3d. Calendar: Use MS365 MCP outlook_calendar_search to fetch today's meetings.

3e. This Cycle candidates: From the Jira sprint results (Step 3a), identify items that are not Done and not already present anywhere in the backlog file (check all sections — Today, Tomorrow, This Week, This Cycle, Next Week, Whenever). These are sprint commitments that have fallen off the radar.