/triage — Bead state hygiene

Backlog triage for stale and blocked issues requires auditing each bead population, making per-bead lifecycle decisions to close, defer, or reopen items, and flushing state updates to a committed JSONL file. This restores reliable release readiness.

Handling orphaned items causing project hygiene issues involves snapshotting bead populations to identify state drift, then applying per-bead decisions to close true orphans or demote zombies back to claimable open states.

Bead state triage improves release readiness by fixing abandoned and blocked workflow states so that ready items remain a reliable source of truth. It prioritizes populations and applies per-bead dependency de-blocking actions during pre-release hardening.

Issue lifecycle housekeeping on workflow state is needed during onboarding, pre-release hardening, or weekly cycles when backlog state becomes noisy and ready items are difficult to scan. It flushes state updates via a git commit.

You can update dependency claims and escalate blockers during backlog triage by applying per-bead lifecycle decisions. The workflow audits blocked populations and executes dependency de-blocking actions before syncing the JSONL update.

A limitation of bead state triage for epic close-eligibility is that it requires auditing each population manually to make per-bead decisions. It does not automatically close epics; it identifies eligible items and requires a committed JSONL update to persist changes.