apm-triage-panel

APM Triage Panel -- Single-Issue Triage Orchestration

Advisory only. Read assets/label-contract.json before reasoning. The caller supplies the repository's GOVERNANCE.md and CONTRIBUTING.md: those human policies override persona instructions. If unavailable, do not invent authority or review contacts; flag the missing context. An accept recommendation is not acceptance. Labels and silence are not approval. Only a responsible human maintainer approves scope, priority, contributor invitations, review capacity, and release targeting.

The panel is fixed at 2 mandatory specialist lenses + up to 3 conditional lenses + 1 always-active arbiter = 6 persona sections in one triage comment. You play each lens in turn from inside a single agent loop (progressive-disclosure skill model -- no sub-agent dispatch). Routing chooses which lenses execute; it never changes which headings appear in the final comment.

This skill mirrors the apm-review-panel orchestration shape on purpose. Same single-comment discipline, same completeness gate, same persona-pass procedure -- only the personas, the rubric, and the output template differ.

Agent roster

Skipped by default: CLI Logging Expert, Auth Expert. Triage operates on issue intent, not on diffs -- those personas are invoked downstream by apm-review-panel once a PR exists.

Routing topology

   devx-ux-expert      supply-chain-security-expert
        \_______________________/
                    |
                    |   <-- python-architect (conditional; design /
                    |       architecture / new primitive / new schema)
                    |
                    |   <-- doc-writer (conditional; docs work or
                    |       user-facing change that needs new doc pages)
                    v
                apm-ceo               <----  oss-growth-hacker
           (final call / arbiter)           (conditional; tunes tone
                                             when author is new)

• Specialists raise findings independently -- no implicit consensus.
• CEO synthesizes advice on classification, readiness, and reply tone. The persona is not a project officer and cannot ratify human decisions.
• Growth Hacker, Python Architect, and Doc Writer are side-channels to the CEO when activated. They never block a specialist finding; they feed the CEO's arbitration:
  • Growth Hacker tunes the comment's tone for first-time and low-interaction contributors.
  • Python Architect flags feasibility and cross-cutting impact, and pushes the decision toward status/needs-design when warranted.
  • Doc Writer flags whether docs work is implied and whether the suggested comment wording is grounded in the user vocabulary used in the README and guides.

Conditional panelists

Three personas are conditional: OSS Growth Hacker, Python Architect, and Doc Writer. Each follows the same shape: an explicit YES/NO activation rule plus an inactive-reason fallback. Maximum lenses in a single triage = 6 (2 mandatory + 3 conditional + 1 arbiter).

OSS Growth Hacker

Activate oss-growth-hacker if either rule below matches.

1. Fast-path author trigger. Activate the Growth Hacker lens immediately when the issue's author meets ANY of:

   • GitHub author_association is FIRST_TIME_CONTRIBUTOR, FIRST_TIMER, or NONE against microsoft/apm.
   • Author has fewer than 3 prior interactions (issues + PRs + comments) on microsoft/apm.
   • Issue body explicitly says "first issue", "new to APM", or similar.

2. Fallback self-check. If author signals are ambiguous, answer this before activating the lens:

   Would the warmth, framing, or pointer-set in the reply meaningfully change if I knew this was someone's first interaction with the project? Answer YES or NO with one sentence. If unsure, answer YES.

Routing rule:

• YES -> take the OSS Growth Hacker lens (per the Persona pass procedure) and capture its tone-tuning findings.
• NO -> record OSS Growth Hacker inactive reason: <one sentence> in working notes; do not take the lens.

Python Architect

Activate python-architect if either rule below matches.

1. Fast-path label / scope trigger. Activate the Architecture Reviewer lens immediately when ANY of:

   • The issue carries type/architecture (current or proposed) or the breaking-change preserved label.
   • The issue body proposes a new top-level CLI command, or a schema change to apm.yml, apm.lock.yaml, or apm-policy.yml.
   • The issue body contains keywords indicating cross-module or cross-file work, a new module, a new pattern, a new contract, or a new primitive design -- e.g. "refactor", "rearchitect", "new module", "design", "abstraction", "schema change", "pluggable", "introduce X pattern".

2. Fallback self-check. If the issue is ambiguous, answer this before activating the lens:

   Does this issue, if accepted as written, require a cross-cutting design decision (interface, data model, migration boundary, or new primitive) before code can land safely? Answer YES or NO with one sentence. If unsure, answer YES.

Routing rule:

• YES -> take the Python Architect lens. Capture: feasibility of the design as proposed, callouts of cross-cutting impact, and whether the issue should land as status/needs-design instead of status/accepted.
• NO -> record Python Architect inactive reason: <one sentence> in working notes; do not take the lens.

Doc Writer

Activate doc-writer if either rule below matches.

1. Fast-path label / scope trigger. Activate the Documentation Reviewer lens immediately when ANY of:

   • The issue is type/docs or carries area/docs-site (current or proposed).
   • The issue body proposes documentation, README, reference, guide, or migration-note changes.
   • The issue is a user-facing feature that will require new doc pages -- e.g. a new CLI flag, a new primitive, a new authoring concept.

2. Fallback self-check. If the issue is ambiguous, answer this before activating the lens:

   Will an implementing PR for this issue need to add or change user-facing documentation in docs/src/content/docs/ or in the README? Answer YES or NO with one sentence. If unsure, answer YES.

Routing rule:

• YES -> take the Doc Writer lens. Capture: whether docs work is implied (and whether area/docs-site should be added as a secondary area/* so the implementing PR is reminded), and whether the proposed comment wording is clear and grounded in the user vocabulary used in the README and guides.
• NO -> record Doc Writer inactive reason: <one sentence> in working notes; do not take the lens.

Triage recommendation rubric

The CEO lens recommends exactly ONE outcome from this rubric:

• accept -- direction appears clear and aligned. Propose bounded scope for a responsible maintainer to approve; do not invite implementation.
• needs-design -- direction is sound but the design must be settled before code lands. Recommend design discussion and name in the comment exactly what must be designed (interface, data model, migration, security boundary).
• decline-with-reason -- out of scope for APM as positioned by the README spine. Suggest an alternative tool, a workaround, or the upstream project. Always courteous, always concrete.
• duplicate-of #N -- propose the canonical issue. The orchestrator must verify the link resolves before posting.
• defer-later -- not ready to invite work, including absent review capacity. Recommend deferral (status/deferred if a human chooses). NEVER map defer-later to status/accepted. A missing milestone alone does not prevent acceptance: scope approval and release targeting differ.
• auto-handle -- automated noise such as a daily CLI-consistency report PR or scheduled bot issue. Propose closing if the report has zero unaddressed High findings; otherwise propose splitting into individual issues with the right area/* labels and reference back to the parent.

Classification and proposed brief

assets/label-contract.json is the canonical label contract, including human decision states, bot processing, legacy read aliases, and safe rollout. Do not duplicate or expand its allowlist. Contributors need not supply a five-axis taxonomy. Propose only useful type/area/theme classification; null or an empty list is valid when uncertain. At most six classification labels, with at most one type and one primary theme.

Preserve existing labels, priority, invitations, milestone, and human approval records. A conflicting classification belongs in advice, not a replacement. Legacy aliases are read-only compatibility, not permission to relabel anything. The workflow owns processing markers independently of the recommendation; this skill never chooses a human status to apply.

Every recommendation includes a concise proposed, not approved, brief: scope, done_when, exclusions, and review_needs. State missing information explicitly. Identify needed expertise and unresolved review capacity, not an invented assignment or promise. Use the human roster: core maintainers overlap project-wide; registry public API work goes to its primary maintainer with core backup, not unrelated registry internals. Do not require the lead to reapprove every routine decision.

No release milestone, priority, or contributor invitation is emitted as a machine-actionable field. These remain human decisions.

The caller uses scripts/triage_state.py for deterministic, read-only selection and label planning against the contract. Run it with --help for invocation; it reads normalized JSON from stdin, writes a JSON plan to stdout, and reports failures on stderr with a nonzero exit. It never calls GitHub, posts comments, or verifies human approval.

Quality gates

A triage comment passes when:

• DevX UX Expert: real user surface identified, the request maps (or fails to map) to a concrete README-anchored capability
• Supply Chain Security Expert: P/G/S risk surfaces assessed; if the issue touches lockfile, marketplace, MCP config, signing, or auth, name the relevant risk and review expertise
• APM CEO: recommendation, classification, brief, and tone synthesized; human approval is explicitly still required
• OSS Growth Hacker lens taken or inactive reason recorded; if taken, tone tuned for a new or low-interaction contributor and the reply names a concrete next step they can take
• Python Architect lens taken or inactive reason recorded; if taken, feasibility, cross-cutting impact, and any status/needs-design recommendation are captured
• Doc Writer lens taken or inactive reason recorded; if taken, docs implication is named and any area/docs-site secondary label is proposed when the implementing PR will need new pages

Notes

• This skill orchestrates a panel in your own context -- you are the only agent. You load each persona's .agent.md reference file on demand (progressive disclosure), assume that persona's lens to produce its findings, then move to the next persona. Do NOT spawn sub-agents (no task tool dispatch) -- the panel is a sequence of reasoning passes inside one agent loop, not a multi-agent fan-out.
• Persona detail lives in the linked .agent.md files. Read each one when you switch to that persona; do not pre-load all of them.

Execution checklist

When this skill is activated for an issue, work through these steps in order, in a single agent loop. Do not skip ahead and do not emit any output before the final step.

1. Read the issue context (title, body, labels, author, author_association, prior comments), supplied human governance, and assets/label-contract.json. Do not re-fetch issue context from inside the skill.
2. Resolve the three conditional cases -- OSS Growth Hacker, Python Architect, Doc Writer -- using the rules in "Conditional panelists" above. For each, record either an activation decision or <Persona> inactive reason: <one sentence> in working notes.
3. For each mandatory persona (plus any conditional persona that activated), follow the Persona pass procedure below, one persona at a time. Do not try to play multiple personas in a single pass.
4. Run the pre-arbitration completeness gate:
   • Findings exist in working notes for the 2 mandatory specialists (DevX UX Expert, Supply Chain Security Expert).
   • For EACH of OSS Growth Hacker, Python Architect, and Doc Writer: exactly one of <Persona> findings or <Persona> inactive reason exists (neither = incomplete; both = inconsistent routing).
   • No persona section is missing or empty. If any check fails, redo that persona's pass and repeat the gate. Do not proceed to step 5 until the gate passes.
5. Take the APM CEO lens (load ../../agents/apm-ceo.agent.md) and arbitrate the collected findings into a single recommendation, useful classification, proposed brief, and reply tone. Still in your own context. CEO arbitration may run only after the completeness gate has passed.
6. If the rubric outcome is duplicate-of #N, use the caller's authenticated GitHub issue-read tool to verify the candidate exists and is open before committing the link. If it cannot be verified, use accept or needs-design as appropriate and mention the suspected duplicate only in prose.
7. Now (and only now) load assets/triage-template.md and fill it in with the collected findings, recommendation, classification, proposed brief, and suggested comment body.
8. Verify the rendered comment contains every top-level heading from the template, all six persona <details> sections, and the closing triage-recommendation JSON block. If any element is missing, re-render from the template instead of posting a hand-composed substitute.
9. Return the filled template and its structured triage-recommendation JSON tail to the caller. The workflow alone posts it via its safe-output channel; direct callers receive advice without writes. Never post from inside the skill or authorize implementation. This is the ONLY output emission for the entire panel run -- no per-persona comments, no progress comments.

Persona pass procedure

For each persona, run this exact procedure in your own context:

1. Open the persona's .agent.md file (linked in the roster) and read its scope, lens, anti-patterns, and required return shape.
2. From that persona's lens, review the issue title, body, labels, author signals, and any prior comments against the scope declared in the file.
3. Write the findings to working notes under <persona-name>: <findings> (or, for an inactive conditional persona, <Persona> inactive reason: <one sentence>).
4. Drop the persona lens before moving on. Do not emit any comment from inside a persona pass; persona findings stay in working notes until step 7 synthesizes them.

Output contract

This contract is non-negotiable -- it is the difference between a triage that lands as one cohesive comment and one that fragments into per-persona noise.

• Produce exactly one comment per triage run.
• Use assets/triage-template.md as the comment body. Keep its section headings exactly as written. Adapt the body of each section to the issue. Do not invent new top-level sections or drop existing ones.
• The trailing fenced ```json block named triage-recommendation is REQUIRED. Its schema_version: 2 and advisory_only: true distinguish it from legacy triage-decision comments. Consumers must not interpret either format as human approval. No operative status, priority, invitation, or milestone fields are present.
• ASCII only inside the comment body and JSON tail. No emojis, no Unicode dashes, no box-drawing characters. Use [+] [!] [x] [i] [*] [>] if status symbols are needed.
• CEO arbitration may run only after the completeness gate passes.
• Never emit findings as separate comments, intermediate progress comments, or "I will now invoke X" status comments.
• Load assets/triage-template.md at synthesis time only (step 7 above) -- not at activation, not while collecting findings.

Anti-patterns

• Over-labelling. Do not exceed 6 proposed classification labels. If you find yourself reaching for 7+, prune the weakest area/*.
• Approval by proxy. A recommendation, accepted label, agent persona, or silence never authorizes implementation or a release.
• Silent decline. Do not auto-close or decline-with-reason without a courteous reason linked to the README spine, the manifesto. Every decline names where the user can go instead.
• Vague needs-design. Never recommend needs-design without naming, in the suggested comment, exactly what must be designed (interface, data model, migration, security boundary). "We need to think about this" is not a design-needed reason.
• Consuming human state. Keep status/needs-triage after advice; human decision state and bot processing state are independent.
• Wildcard heuristics. Do not activate the OSS Growth Hacker on *new* or *first* keyword matches alone -- always cross-check author_association and prior interactions on microsoft/apm. Same discipline for Python Architect (do not fire on the bare word "refactor" in unrelated context -- check the issue's actual scope) and Doc Writer (do not fire purely on the word "docs" appearing in passing -- the issue must propose or imply a doc-surface change).

Gotchas

• Roster invariant. The frontmatter description, the roster table, the conditional-panelist rule, the triage template, and the quality gates MUST agree on the persona set. If you change one, change all of them in the same edit.
• No new persona required. This skill deliberately reuses devx-ux-expert, supply-chain-security-expert, apm-ceo, oss-growth-hacker, python-architect, and doc-writer. Do not create a triage-* persona; the README spine plus the label taxonomy plus the existing CEO arbiter are sufficient grounding.
• Bundle layout on the runner. Resolve assets/triage-template.md relative to the loaded SKILL.md. Never hard-code an installation directory.
• No multi-persona-in-one-pass. Each persona has its own .agent.md for a reason -- read it when you take that lens, write the findings, then drop the lens before moving on.
• Single-emission discipline is fragile under interruption. If you find yourself wanting to "post a quick partial decision and then update it", don't. Buffer in working notes; emit once.