Epic overview

Epic Overview

Produce a structured view of all active epics and initiatives, grouped by their parent objective or project area. Each group gets a short description of what it is, then lists every epic under it with owner, progress, and a one-liner explanation.

When to use

• "Epic overview", "show me all our epics", "what initiatives are we running"
• "Map our work", "project portfolio", "what does the team own"
• Onboarding context: "give someone a picture of everything we're working on"

Prerequisites

• GitHub CLI (gh) authenticated with org access
• Team repo with issues labeled epic, initiative, or batch
• Team roster (team.json) for DRI identification

Output

Default: conversational (printed to screen). User can ask to save it to a vault note, markdown file, or paste destination.

Process

Step 1: Gather all open epics and parent issues

Query the team repo for:

- All open issues with label: epic, initiative, or batch
- All open issues with sub_issues_summary.total > 0 (acting as parent issues)

For each, capture: number, title, assignees, labels, updated_at, sub_issues progress.

Step 2: Identify DRI

DRI = first assignee on the issue. If no assignee, mark as "unassigned."

Step 3: Group by initiative/objective

Analyze the epics by:

• Labels (e.g., virtual-registry, authentic-contributions, Releases)
• Title patterns and naming conventions
• Parent-child relationships (sub-issues of larger epics)
• Shared assignees and project area context

Create logical groupings that represent strategic objectives or project areas. Each group should have:

• A meaningful name (not just a label echo)
• A 1-2 sentence description of what the objective is

Common grouping patterns:

• Product feature area (e.g., "Releases & Immutability")
• Customer integration (e.g., "Partner Integration / Virtual Registry")
• Infrastructure domain (e.g., "Signing Infrastructure")
• Operational category (e.g., "Maintenance & Reliability")

Step 4: Write the overview

For each group:

## [Initiative Name]

[1-2 sentence description of what this initiative is and why it matters.]

- [#N Title](url) — @dri
  [One sentence: what this epic actually does.] Progress: X/Y (Z%).
- [#N Title](url) — unassigned
  [Description.] Progress: X/Y (Z%).

Step 5: Surface unknowns

At the end, include a section for:

• Epics that don't clearly fit any group
• Stale epics (no activity 60+ days) that may be dead
• Completed epics (100% or all sub-issues closed) that should be closed

Step 6: Output

Default: Print to screen as markdown.

If user asks to save: Write to specified location (e.g., vault note, project file). Include a date header so it's clear when the overview was generated.

Content guidelines

• One sentence per epic. The overview is for scanning, not deep reading. Just say what it does.
• Group by what makes sense, not by label. Sometimes one label covers multiple objectives; sometimes multiple labels are really one thing.
• Show progress honestly. X/Y sub-issues with percentage. If 0/0, say "no sub-issues tracked."
• Flag unassigned work. Every epic should have a DRI. Unassigned = a decision to make.
• Include everything open. Don't filter by "active" here. The point is the complete picture, including work that's stalled or forgotten.
• Dead epics go at the bottom. Don't bury them in their group where they clutter the active work view.

Relationship to other skills

• epic-cleanup: Cleanup is the actionable version (tasks to assign, close, decide). Overview is the reference map.
• project-status: Status covers the last 7 days of movement. Overview is the static "what exists" view regardless of recent activity.
• sprint-status: Sprint is scoped to the current iteration. Overview is all open work.