Pr triage

Purpose

Rank pull requests by urgency, impact, merge risk, and blocking effect so review time goes to the most important work first.

When to Use

• Managing a backlog of open pull requests.
• Surfacing review debt or stale branches.
• Prioritizing review and merge work.
• Preparing a short daily or weekly PR action list.

Do not use for deep code review or CI debugging unless explicitly requested.

Requirements

Preferred tools:

• local git
• optional gh CLI or repository connector

Optional gh check:

Get-Command gh -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
gh auth status

Inputs

• Access to local git state, gh, connector data, or a combination
• Optional focus area such as stale branches, blocked reviews, or high-risk merges
• Optional base branch and repository remote

Workflow

1. Use the freshest source available.

git status --short
git branch --show-current
git log --oneline --decorate -n 20

2. Gather PR metadata when GitHub CLI is available:

gh pr list --state open --json number,title,author,updatedAt,isDraft,reviewDecision,mergeStateStatus,statusCheckRollup,labels
gh pr view <pr> --json files,additions,deletions,reviewDecision,mergeStateStatus,statusCheckRollup

3. Rank each PR.

Signal	Higher priority when
Blocking effect	Other work depends on it
Review age	It is stale but still relevant
Merge state	It has conflicts or failing required checks
Blast radius	It touches public API, auth, data, migrations, or shared infra
Size	It is small enough to unblock quickly or too large to ignore

4. Separate action types:

• review now
• ask author for changes
• wait for CI
• rebase or resolve conflicts
• close or defer

5. Report uncertainty when source data is partial or stale.

Output

PR TRIAGE:
Top actions:
1. <PR> - <action> - <reason>

Blocked:
- <PR> - <blocker>

Review now:
- <PR> - <why now>

Stale/defer:
- <PR> - <reason>

Risks:
- <risk needing human judgment>

Verification

• Freshest available source was used.
• Source mismatches or missing metadata were called out.
• Ranking criteria were applied consistently.
• Each top PR has a concrete next action.
• No code was edited.

Failure Modes

• Using stale PR metadata without saying so.
• Ranking by age only and ignoring merge risk.
• Turning triage into deep review or debugging.
• Pretending gh data exists when the CLI is missing or unauthenticated.

Missing Dependency Behavior

If gh is missing or unauthenticated:

1. Use local git state or connector data instead.
2. Mark GitHub-hosted metadata as partial or stale.
3. Do not present PR status, checks, or review state as current unless verified.