Plan Backlog

plan-backlog: GitHub Issues RICE Scorer

Fetches open GitHub Issues, scores each with RICE (Reach × Impact × Confidence ÷ Effort), and outputs a ranked priority table. READ-ONLY — writes only to agent/state/backlog.json.

---

Step 0: Safety

HALT check — if config.safety.halt_file exists: print [HALT] plan-backlog stopped. Reason: {content} and exit.

gh check — run gh --version. If unavailable:

gh CLI not available. Skipping plan-backlog.
Install: https://cli.github.com  |  Auth: gh auth login

Exit cleanly (not an error).

---

Step 1: Load Issues

Remote check — before fetching issues, verify a GitHub remote exists:

git remote -v 2>/dev/null | grep -qE 'github\.com[:/]'

This checks for any remote pointing to GitHub (regardless of remote name — origin, upstream, etc.) and rejects non-GitHub remotes (GitLab, Bitbucket, etc.) that would cause gh to fail with a confusing error.

If no GitHub remote is found:

• Print [plan-backlog] No GitHub remote configured. Backlog scoring requires a GitHub repository with issues. Skipping.
• Write state file with "status": "no_remote" (preserve and increment run_count if state already exists)
• Exit 0 — do NOT crash or show raw git errors

EVERY early-exit state write (no_remote, no_issues, fetch/parse error) MUST also include "actionable_items": 0, "top_rice_score": 0.0 — evolve's 4-B chain trigger evaluates those fields (actionable_items >= 1 AND top_rice_score >= 50); omitting them leaves the condition undecidable instead of cleanly false.

gh issue list --state open --json number,title,labels,body,createdAt,assignees --limit 100

On command error → Could not fetch issues. Is this a GitHub repository? Skipping. — exit 0. On malformed JSON (parse error) → treat identically to command error: log Could not parse gh output. Skipping. — exit 0. On empty array → write state with status: "no_issues", print No open issues to score. — exit 0.

Also read agent/state/backlog.json (if it exists) to carry forward run_count.

---

Step 2: RICE Scoring

Body cap: only the first 2000 characters of each issue body are considered for scoring (avoids runaway cost on mega-issues with embedded logs).

Deduplication: before scoring, group issues whose titles share >=80% similarity (case-insensitive Levenshtein ratio). Within each group, keep only the lowest-numbered (oldest) issue; mark the rest "deduplicated": true in the state scores array and set their rice_score to 0. The report notes: N duplicate issues collapsed.

For each issue estimate four components from title, labels, and body.

| Component | Range | Label signals (highest match wins) | Default | |---|---|---|---| | Reach | 0.0–1.0 | user-facing/ux/frontend → 0.8, api/perf → 0.6, internal/chore → 0.2 | 0.5 | | Impact | 0.25–3.0 | critical/P0 → 3.0, bug/security → 2.0, enhancement/P1 → 1.0, P2/low → 0.5 | 1.0 | | Confidence | 0.5–1.0 | ≥3 labels + body>200 → 1.0, ≥1 label or body>100 → 0.8, bare issue → 0.5 | 0.8 | | Effort | 1–10 days | easy/S → 1, L/needs-design or body>500 → 5, epic/XL → 8 | 3 |

Guard: Effort MUST be clamped to [1, 10] (never zero — prevents division-by-zero). When all issues share identical labels (or have no labels at all), every issue receives the same defaults; this is expected — relative ordering then falls back to Impact and Reach heuristics derived from the title and body text.

RICE = (Reach × Impact × Confidence) / Effort × 100   [round to 2 decimal places]

---

Step 3: Priority Table

Sort by RICE descending. Display the top 25 issues in the table (print ... and N more scored issues (see backlog.json) if truncated).

plan-backlog —    Scored: N issues (showing top 25)
| #   | Title                                         | RICE  |  R  |  I  |  C  |  E  | Labels          |
|-----|-----------------------------------------------|-------|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----------------|
|  42 | Fix login redirect loop                       | 53.33 | 0.8 | 2.0 | 1.0 |   3 | bug, P0         |

Truncate titles to 45 chars with .... Truncate the Labels column to 20 chars with ... to keep rows aligned when issues carry many labels.

---

Step 4: State Update

Write to agent/state/backlog.json (create agent/state/ if missing):

{ "schema_version": "1.0.0", "last_run": "", "run_count": 1,
  "scored_count": 12, "unscored_count": 0, "status": "scored",
  "actionable_items": 12, "top_rice_score": 53.33,
  "duplicates_collapsed": 2,
  "scores": [{ "number": 42, "title": "Fix login redirect loop",
    "rice_score": 53.33, "reach": 0.8, "impact": 2.0, "confidence": 1.0,
    "effort": 3, "labels": ["bug", "P0"], "created_at": "",
    "deduplicated": false }] }

Every issue is scored (defaults applied when labels/body absent). status: "scored", "no_issues", or "no_remote".

The state MUST also include two top-level summary fields consumed by chain triggers:

"actionable_items": 12,
"top_rice_score": 53.33

actionable_items = count of scores where rice_score > 0. top_rice_score = maximum rice_score across all scored issues (0.0 when no issues).

---

Step 5: Report

Top 5 issues by RICE:
  1. #42 Fix login redirect loop (RICE 53.33) — bug, P0
  2. #7  Add dark mode toggle    (RICE 13.33) — enhancement
  ...

Recommendation: Start with #42. High-impact bug affecting most users.
Chain trigger will fire on next /evolve when top RICE > 50.

List all issues if fewer than 5. If none: No open issues to score. Backlog is clear.

---

Graceful Degradation

| Scenario | Behavior | |---|---| | HALT file present | Print reason, exit immediately | | gh not installed | Print install hint, exit 0 | | No GitHub remote configured | Write status: "no_remote", print message, exit 0 | | Not a GitHub repo | Print message, exit 0 | | Malformed gh JSON output | Log parse-error message, exit 0 | | No open issues | Write status: "no_issues", exit 0 | | Issue has no labels or body | Apply all defaults; still scored | | agent/state/ missing | Create directory, then write | | backlog.json corrupt | Re-initialize as first run |

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: mataeil
• Source: mataeil/OODA-loop
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.