# Keeping a backlog honest

> The four standalone skills (triage, cleanup, changelog, retro), when to run each and what each one writes.

Four skills that are not part of the build loop. You run them on their own,
against a workspace rather than a plan, and all four show you what they intend
to do before they do it.

## What each one is for

`rd-triage` answers "what should we do next". It reads the whole open backlog,
ranks the parents into Now, Next, Later and Icebox from real signal, and writes
priorities only after you agree.

`rd-cleanup` answers "what did we lose". Open children under a parent that is
already done, and issues sitting in progress that nothing has touched in weeks.
Each one is decided on evidence: a merged pull request, a commit naming the id,
a notes comment. It never deletes.

`rd-changelog` answers "what shipped". Completed issues in a window, read as
Feature, Improvement and Fix entries in customer language, prepended to
`.radial/changelog.md`.

`rd-retro` answers "how did that go". One finished tree, scored against the
workflow from what Radial and git already hold, with three proposals phrased as
wrappers you can paste. It writes nothing at all.

## A rhythm that works

| When | Run | Why then |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Monday, before planning | `/rd-triage` | The ranking is the planning input, not a report about it |
| After a big tree merges | `/rd-retro`, then `/rd-cleanup` | The record is freshest, and the tree is where strays appear |
| At a release | `/rd-changelog --since <last tag>` | The tag is the window, so nothing is guessed |
| Monthly | `/rd-cleanup` | Strays accumulate slowly; a month is long enough to be worth a sweep |

Nothing enforces this. Two of the four on a regular cadence is already more
backlog hygiene than most teams manage.

## What they write

`rd-triage` writes priorities, one `radial update` per row you approved, and
reads one back. `rd-cleanup` closes or detaches the rows you approved, with the
evidence in the close message. `rd-changelog` writes one file,
`.radial/changelog.md`, preserving everything already in it. `rd-retro` writes
nothing.

All four stop before writing and show you a table. That is not politeness: a
skill that ranks a backlog or closes stranded work is making judgement calls on
incomplete information, and the table is where you catch the one it got wrong.

<callout kind="tip">

Start with `/rd-retro` on a tree that went badly. Its output is the fastest way
to get a first wrapper that is about something real, rather than a rule you
imagined you needed.

</callout>