The Triage Rubric
Real categories, real templates, real reasoning. The nurse is dramatic; the framework underneath is not.
🟢GOOD FIRST ISSUE
Self-contained, well-scoped, well-isolated code area. Examples: typo fixes, doc improvements, small refactors, missing tests, deprecation cleanups. The nurse looks for issues with clear acceptance criteria and a low blast radius. These are gold for new contributors — label them, link them in CONTRIBUTING.md, and watch your bus factor improve.
🟡NEEDS REPRO
Bug reports without a minimal reproduction, missing version info, screenshot-only descriptions, or vague phrasing like 'doesn't work'. The reply template asks specifically for: (1) minimal reproduction (CodeSandbox / repo link), (2) versions of all relevant tools, (3) expected vs actual behavior. Ratio: roughly 40% of these are resolved by the user when they try to write the repro.
🔴CLOSE WITH KINDNESS
Out-of-scope features, duplicates, support questions better suited for Discord/Stack Overflow, abandoned threads, or requests for unpaid custom work. Phrasing borrows from maintainers like Brett Cannon and Jacob Kaplan-Moss: thank the reporter, explain the why, suggest a path forward (a fork, a related project, a discussion forum). Never cold. Never sarcastic.
âš«ACTUALLY URGENT
Security issues, data loss, recently-introduced regressions in main, broken releases, or bugs blocking many users. The nurse caps this category at 3. Most things are NOT urgent — flagging everything as P0 is how maintainers burn out. If you have more than 3 actual P0s, the project itself is the emergency, not the issues.
Why the 5 questions?
- Open issue count — calibrates expectation. 30 is a Tuesday; 800 is an existential.
- Last good sleep — sleep gates capacity. The Prescription will refuse to schedule coding for unslept maintainers.
- Rude commenter — flagged so the playlist surfaces ambient/calming music. Also: you have permission to mute them.
- Project description — gives Claude context for tone-matching the reply templates.
- Energy level — directly modulates the action plan's intensity. 1-4 = batch close + log off. 7-10 = ship something.
💊 The Prescription rules
Always 3 bullets. Always covers exactly 90 minutes. Exactly one bullet is non-coding maintenance (replying, thanking, doc updates) — because PRs are a small fraction of the actual work. The rest scale to your reported energy.