APM Triage Panel -- Single-Issue Triage Orchestration

The panel is fixed at 2 mandatory specialist lenses + up to 3 conditional lenses + 1 always-active arbiter = 6 persona sections in one triage comment. You play each lens in turn from inside a single agent loop (progressive-disclosure skill model -- no sub-agent dispatch). Routing chooses which lenses execute; it never changes which headings appear in the final comment.

This skill mirrors the apm-review-panel orchestration shape on purpose. Same single-comment discipline, same completeness gate, same persona-pass procedure -- only the personas, the rubric, and the output template differ.

Agent roster

Skipped by default: CLI Logging Expert, Auth Expert. Triage operates on issue intent, not on diffs -- those personas are invoked downstream by apm-review-panel once a PR exists.

Routing topology

devx-ux-expert      supply-chain-security-expert
        \_______________________/
                    |
                    |   <-- python-architect (conditional; design /
                    |       architecture / new primitive / new schema)
                    |
                    |   <-- doc-writer (conditional; docs work or
                    |       user-facing change that needs new doc pages)
                    v
                apm-ceo               <----  oss-growth-hacker
           (final call / arbiter)           (conditional; tunes tone
                                             when author is new)

• Specialists raise findings independently -- no implicit consensus.
• CEO arbitrates the theme, milestone, priority, and tone of the reply. CEO has the final call on the decision rubric.
• Growth Hacker, Python Architect, and Doc Writer are side-channels to the CEO when activated. They never block a specialist finding; they feed the CEO's arbitration:
  • Growth Hacker tunes the comment's tone for first-time and low-interaction contributors.
  • Python Architect flags feasibility and cross-cutting impact, and pushes the decision toward status/needs-design when warranted.
  • Doc Writer flags whether docs work is implied and whether the suggested comment wording is grounded in the user vocabulary used in the README and guides.

Conditional panelists

Three personas are conditional: OSS Growth Hacker, Python Architect, and Doc Writer. Each follows the same shape: an explicit YES/NO activation rule plus an inactive-reason fallback. Maximum lenses in a single triage = 6 (2 mandatory + 3 conditional + 1 arbiter).

OSS Growth Hacker

Activate oss-growth-hacker if either rule below matches.

1. Fast-path author trigger. Activate the Growth Hacker lens immediately when the issue's author meets ANY of:

   • GitHub author_association is FIRST_TIME_CONTRIBUTOR, FIRST_TIMER, or NONE against microsoft/apm.
   • Author has fewer than 3 prior interactions (issues + PRs + comments) on microsoft/apm.
   • Issue body explicitly says "first issue", "new to APM", or similar.

2. Fallback self-check. If author signals are ambiguous, answer this before activating the lens:

   Would the warmth, framing, or pointer-set in the reply meaningfully change if I knew this was someone's first interaction with the project? Answer YES or NO with one sentence. If unsure, answer YES.

Routing rule:

• YES -> take the OSS Growth Hacker lens (per the Persona pass procedure) and capture its tone-tuning findings.
• NO -> record OSS Growth Hacker inactive reason: <one sentence> in working notes; do not take the lens.

Python Architect

Activate python-architect if either rule below matches.

1. Fast-path label / scope trigger. Activate the Architecture Reviewer lens immediately when ANY of:

   • The issue carries type/architecture (current or proposed) or the breaking-change preserved label.
   • The issue body proposes a new top-level CLI command, or a schema change to apm.yml, apm.lock.yaml, or apm-policy.yml.
   • The issue body contains keywords indicating cross-module or cross-file work, a new module, a new pattern, a new contract, or a new primitive design -- e.g. "refactor", "rearchitect", "new module", "design", "abstraction", "schema change", "pluggable", "introduce X pattern".

2. Fallback self-check. If the issue is ambiguous, answer this before activating the lens:

   Does this issue, if accepted as written, require a cross-cutting design decision (interface, data model, migration boundary, or new primitive) before code can land safely? Answer YES or NO with one sentence. If unsure, answer YES.

Routing rule:

• YES -> take the Python Architect lens. Capture: feasibility of the design as proposed, callouts of cross-cutting impact, and whether the issue should land as status/needs-design instead of status/accepted.
• NO -> record Python Architect inactive reason: <one sentence> in working notes; do not take the lens.

Doc Writer

Activate doc-writer if either rule below matches.

1. Fast-path label / scope trigger. Activate the Documentation Reviewer lens immediately when ANY of:

   • The issue is type/docs or carries area/docs-site (current or proposed).
   • The issue body proposes documentation, README, reference, guide, or migration-note changes.
   • The issue is a user-facing feature that will require new doc pages -- e.g. a new CLI flag, a new primitive, a new authoring concept.

2. Fallback self-check. If the issue is ambiguous, answer this before activating the lens:

   Will an implementing PR for this issue need to add or change user-facing documentation in docs/src/content/docs/ or in the README? Answer YES or NO with one sentence. If unsure, answer YES.

Routing rule:

• YES -> take the Doc Writer lens. Capture: whether docs work is implied (and whether area/docs-site should be added as a secondary area/* so the implementing PR is reminded), and whether the proposed comment wording is clear and grounded in the user vocabulary used in the README and guides.
• NO -> record Doc Writer inactive reason: <one sentence> in working notes; do not take the lens.

Triage decision rubric

The CEO arbiter picks exactly ONE outcome from this rubric:

• accept -- direction is clear and aligned with the README spine and active release priorities. Assigns full label set + milestone if a current candidate exists.
• needs-design -- direction is sound but the design must be settled before code lands. Apply status/needs-design and name in the comment exactly what must be designed (interface, data model, migration, security boundary).
• decline-with-reason -- out of scope for APM as positioned by the README spine. Suggest an alternative tool, a workaround, or the upstream project. Always courteous, always concrete.
• duplicate-of #N -- propose the canonical issue. The orchestrator must verify the link resolves before posting.
• defer-later -- accepted in principle but no current milestone. Sits as status/accepted plus theme/* + area/* only; no priority/*, no milestone.
• auto-handle -- automated noise such as a daily CLI-consistency report PR or scheduled bot issue. Propose closing if the report has zero unaddressed High findings; otherwise propose splitting into individual issues with the right area/* labels and reference back to the parent.

Label-set construction rules

Triage produces a single proposed label set. The taxonomy:

• Mega-themes (one of): theme/portability, theme/security, theme/governance.
• Sub-themes (area/*, one or more): area/multi-target, area/marketplace, area/package-authoring, area/distribution, area/mcp-config, area/content-security, area/lockfile, area/mcp-trust, area/audit-policy, area/enterprise, area/cli, area/ci-cd, area/testing, area/docs-site.
• Types (exactly one): type/bug, type/feature, type/docs, type/refactor, type/architecture, type/automation, type/release, type/performance.
• Statuses (exactly one): status/needs-triage, status/accepted, status/needs-design, status/blocked, status/in-flight.
• Priorities (optional): priority/high, priority/low.
• Preserved (apply when relevant): breaking-change, good first issue, help wanted, experimental, panel-review, dx, agentic-workflows, dependencies.

Construction rules:

• Exactly one theme/<mega> label is required UNLESS the issue is pure infra (only area/cli, area/ci-cd, area/testing, or area/docs-site apply, with no product surface implication). State this explicitly in the per-lens notes when omitting the theme.
• Multi-theme labels are not allowed. When an issue crosses promises, the CEO chooses the primary theme and records secondary implications in the per-lens notes.
• Exactly one type/* label.
• Exactly one status/* label. The default status/needs-triage is always replaced by the triage outcome (status/accepted, status/needs-design, status/blocked, etc.). Do not leave status/needs-triage on a triaged issue.
• priority/* only on accept with a current milestone or next minor. Never on defer-later, needs-design, or decline-*.

Milestone assignment rules

• Current release milestone for accepted work explicitly committed to the active release cohort.
• No milestone (null) for defer-later and needs-design.

The orchestrator MUST provide the exact titles of open milestones from an authenticated GitHub API read before panel reasoning begins. Choose a milestone only by exact string match against that list. Never compute, infer, or extrapolate a version number, and never invent an x-suffixed title. Closed milestones are ineligible.

If the orchestrator did not provide the list, the read failed, or no open milestone matches the current release cohort, set milestone to null and state: Milestone: none -- no matching open release milestone. Do not emit a milestone string that was not read from the API.

Quality gates

A triage comment passes when:

• DevX UX Expert: real user surface identified, the request maps (or fails to map) to a concrete README-anchored capability
• Supply Chain Security Expert: P/G/S risk surfaces assessed; if the issue touches lockfile, marketplace, MCP config, signing, or auth, theme/security or theme/governance is on the set
• APM CEO: theme, milestone, priority, decision, and reply tone ratified
• OSS Growth Hacker lens taken or inactive reason recorded; if taken, tone tuned for a new or low-interaction contributor and the reply names a concrete next step they can take
• Python Architect lens taken or inactive reason recorded; if taken, feasibility, cross-cutting impact, and any status/needs-design recommendation are captured
• Doc Writer lens taken or inactive reason recorded; if taken, docs implication is named and any area/docs-site secondary label is proposed when the implementing PR will need new pages

Notes

• This skill orchestrates a panel in your own context -- you are the only agent. You load each persona's .agent.md reference file on demand (progressive disclosure), assume that persona's lens to produce its findings, then move to the next persona. Do NOT spawn sub-agents (no task tool dispatch) -- the panel is a sequence of reasoning passes inside one agent loop, not a multi-agent fan-out.
• Persona detail lives in the linked .agent.md files. Read each one when you switch to that persona; do not pre-load all of them.

Execution checklist

When this skill is activated for an issue, work through these steps in order, in a single agent loop. Do not skip ahead and do not emit any output before the final step.

1. Read the issue context (title, body, labels, author, author_association, prior comments) and the orchestrator-provided list of exact open milestone titles. Do not re-fetch either from inside the skill.
2. Resolve the three conditional cases -- OSS Growth Hacker, Python Architect, Doc Writer -- using the rules in "Conditional panelists" above. For each, record either an activation decision or <Persona> inactive reason: <one sentence> in working notes.
3. For each mandatory persona (plus any conditional persona that activated), follow the Persona pass procedure below, one persona at a time. Do not try to play multiple personas in a single pass.
4. Run the pre-arbitration completeness gate:
   • Findings exist in working notes for the 2 mandatory specialists (DevX UX Expert, Supply Chain Security Expert).
   • For EACH of OSS Growth Hacker, Python Architect, and Doc Writer: exactly one of <Persona> findings or <Persona> inactive reason exists (neither = incomplete; both = inconsistent routing).
   • No persona section is missing or empty. If any check fails, redo that persona's pass and repeat the gate. Do not proceed to step 5 until the gate passes.
5. Take the APM CEO lens (load ../../agents/apm-ceo.agent.md) and arbitrate the collected findings into a single decision: rubric outcome, primary theme, area/* set, type/*, status/*, optional priority/*, milestone, and reply tone. Still in your own context. CEO arbitration may run only after the completeness gate has passed.
6. If the rubric outcome is duplicate-of #N, use the caller's authenticated GitHub issue-read tool to verify the candidate exists and is open before committing the link. If it cannot be verified, use accept or needs-design as appropriate and mention the suspected duplicate only in prose.
7. Now (and only now) load assets/triage-template.md and fill it in with the collected findings, decision, label set, milestone, and proposed comment body.
8. Verify the rendered comment contains every top-level heading from the template, all six persona <details> sections, and the closing triage-decision JSON block. If any element is missing, re-render from the template instead of posting a hand-composed substitute.
9. Emit the filled template as exactly ONE comment via the workflow's safe-outputs.add-comment channel. For direct (non-workflow) invocation, return the comment text and the structured triage-decision JSON tail so an orchestrator can apply labels and post the comment without parsing prose. This is the ONLY output emission for the entire panel run -- no per-persona comments, no progress comments.

Persona pass procedure

For each persona, run this exact procedure in your own context:

1. Open the persona's .agent.md file (linked in the roster) and read its scope, lens, anti-patterns, and required return shape.
2. From that persona's lens, review the issue title, body, labels, author signals, and any prior comments against the scope declared in the file.
3. Write the findings to working notes under <persona-name>: <findings> (or, for an inactive conditional persona, <Persona> inactive reason: <one sentence>).
4. Drop the persona lens before moving on. Do not emit any comment from inside a persona pass; persona findings stay in working notes until step 7 synthesizes them.

Output contract

This contract is non-negotiable -- it is the difference between a triage that lands as one cohesive comment and one that fragments into per-persona noise.

• Produce exactly one comment per triage run.
• Use assets/triage-template.md as the comment body. Keep its section headings exactly as written. Adapt the body of each section to the issue. Do not invent new top-level sections or drop existing ones.
• The trailing fenced ```json block named triage-decision is REQUIRED. It is the machine-readable contract that downstream automation uses to apply labels, set the milestone, and post the reply without parsing prose.
• ASCII only inside the comment body and JSON tail. No emojis, no Unicode dashes, no box-drawing characters. Use [+] [!] [x] [i] [*] [>] if status symbols are needed.
• CEO arbitration may run only after the completeness gate passes.
• Never emit findings as separate comments, intermediate progress comments, or "I will now invoke X" status comments.
• Load assets/triage-template.md at synthesis time only (step 7 above) -- not at activation, not while collecting findings.

Anti-patterns

• Over-labelling. Do not exceed 6 labels per issue across theme/* + area/* + type/* + status/* + priority/* + preserved/*. If you find yourself reaching for 7+, prune the weakest area/*.
• Milestone without status. Never assign a milestone to an issue whose status is not status/accepted or status/in-flight. needs-design and defer-later are explicitly milestone-free.
• Silent decline. Do not auto-close or decline-with-reason without a courteous reason linked to the README spine, the manifesto, or the active milestone. Every decline names where the user can go instead.
• Vague needs-design. Never apply status/needs-design without naming, in the suggested comment, exactly what must be designed (interface, data model, migration, security boundary). "We need to think about this" is not a design-needed reason.
• Naked status/needs-triage carryover. Triage replaces the default status/needs-triage label. Leaving it on a triaged issue is a routing bug.
• Wildcard heuristics. Do not activate the OSS Growth Hacker on *new* or *first* keyword matches alone -- always cross-check author_association and prior interactions on microsoft/apm. Same discipline for Python Architect (do not fire on the bare word "refactor" in unrelated context -- check the issue's actual scope) and Doc Writer (do not fire purely on the word "docs" appearing in passing -- the issue must propose or imply a doc-surface change).

Gotchas

• Roster invariant. The frontmatter description, the roster table, the conditional-panelist rule, the triage template, and the quality gates MUST agree on the persona set. If you change one, change all of them in the same edit.
• No new persona required. This skill deliberately reuses devx-ux-expert, supply-chain-security-expert, apm-ceo, oss-growth-hacker, python-architect, and doc-writer. Do not create a triage-* persona; the README spine plus the label taxonomy plus the existing CEO arbiter are sufficient grounding.
• Bundle layout on the runner. Resolve assets/triage-template.md relative to the loaded SKILL.md. Never hard-code an installation directory.
• No multi-persona-in-one-pass. Each persona has its own .agent.md for a reason -- read it when you take that lens, write the findings, then drop the lens before moving on.
• Single-emission discipline is fragile under interruption. If you find yourself wanting to "post a quick partial decision and then update it", don't. Buffer in working notes; emit once.