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Backlog ageing report

A fortnightly read on how old the backlog is, where items sit untouched, and which ones nobody owns.

The prompt
Report on the age of the backlog below. Read only. Change no item.

Source: WHERE, and which project, team or label.
Count as open: WHICH STATES.

Start with the arithmetic. Total open items, and the distribution by
age since creation: under 30 days, 30 to 90, 90 to 180, 180 to 365,
over 365. Give a count and a share for each bucket, with the total
stated so every share can be checked.

Then the same distribution by state, so a long queue in one state is
visible rather than averaged away.

Then four lists.

Oldest untouched. The twenty oldest items with no activity at all,
showing age since creation and days since last activity.
Never triaged. Items still in the intake or backlog state since the day
they were created.
No owner. Open items with nobody assigned, counted and bucketed by age.
Duplicated in wording. Items whose titles read as the same request,
quoted side by side for a human to judge.

Then one line: the median age of open items, and the median age of
items closed in the last ninety days. Both together say more than
either alone.

Rules. Do not recommend closing anything. Do not judge priority. Do not
predict when anything will be done.

How to use it

This one is built to be scheduled. Scheduled tasks are time-based: they do not fire from an incoming email or a changed file.

Use when the backlog keeps growing and nobody can say which parts of it are actually dead.

Vibe prepares and drafts. You verify and decide. Ask for a citation on every finding: a confident answer is not evidence.

What you get back

Age distributions by bucket and by state, the oldest untouched items, and No owner and Never triaged lists.

What it writes

Nothing. This one only answers.

From the source file in awesome-mistral-vibe-prompts, CC BY-SA 4.0. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Mistral AI.