/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

Related

• /issue lint — Detailed per-issue scoring

• /groom — Phase 1 calls /backlog for quick assessment

• /tidy — Automated backlog cleanup