---
name: factory-queue
description: Use when managing mission brief intake — triage, AI-assisted advisory scoring, gating label stamping, and milestones or epics generation (plan mode).
---

# factory-queue

## What this skill does

`factory-queue` manages the ingestion, triage, and planning boundaries of the software factory. It operates directly against the external issue tracker (the Queue) as the single source of truth using the tracker-agnostic integration layer (`factory-mission/references/tracker-integration.md`).

It performs two primary control-plane operations:
1. **Advisory Triage & Ingestion** (default `triage` mode): Pulls un-triaged candidate briefs, runs stateless AI triage scoring, presents the Intent Gate to the human, and stamps gating/dispatch labels.
2. **Product Planning** (`plan` mode): Reads accepted product/architecture decisions and the PRD/AD, generates milestones (done-means) and epics, and pushes them as structured, labeled issues to the Q.

---

## When to use

- At product intake, to triage candidate briefs and approve them for execution.
- After a product/architect lifecycle converges, to decompose the specification into prioritized tracker issues.
- You want to run an advisory-only Intent Gate with automatic label transition gating.

**When NOT to use**:
- For inner-loop feature execution (use `factory-mission` instead).
- As a standalone markdown generator (this requires issue-tracker connectivity).

---

## Operating Modes

### 1. Ingestion & Triage Mode (default)

Operates on candidate issues (labeled `intent`) or local draft briefs:

1. **Pull Candidate Briefs**: Discover the active tracker provider and fetch issues with status `intent` (`factory-mission/references/tracker-integration.md`).
2. **AI Triage Scoring**: Compute stateless advisory scores on three dimensions:
   - **Risk**: Blast radius, data sensitivity, and architectural impact (Low / Medium / High).
   - **Complexity**: Scope and cross-service dependencies (Low / Medium / High).
   - **Agent Confidence**: Estimation of end-to-end execution success (0-100%, High/Medium/Low bands).
3. **Intent Gate Presentation**: Present candidate briefs + advisory scores to the human. If running unattended (no active human terminal), publish the Intent Gate presentation and AI scores as a structured comment with marker `<!-- factory-queue:triage:proposal -->` on the candidate issue. The queue run pauses. The human reviews the proposal, and approves by commenting "approve" or changing the label to `spec-gated`. When resumed, the queue reads the comment/label state and continues. **The Human Intent Gate is non-negotiable**; no brief is auto-approved or auto-rejected.
4. **Label Stamping**:
   - On approval: Transition lifecycle label `intent` ──► `spec-gated`. Stamp automation-gating (`agent-can-execute` or `human-required`) and dispatch (`autonomous` | `supervised` | `interactive`) labels.
   - On rejection: Transition `intent` ──► `cancelled` (or delete draft).
   - On deferral: Move to backlog.

### 2. Plan Mode

Operates post-lifecycle convergence to populate the backlog:

1. **Load Artifacts**: Read accepted PDRs + ADRs and the generated `docs/adlc/product/PRD.md` / `docs/adlc/architect/AD.md`. When no team record-class index was injected at session start, read the binding records directly from `docs/adlc/memory/` (ADR-401 dual-read order: `docs/adlc/memory` first, legacy `.adlc/memory` fallback) and state that fallback in one line.
2. **Generate Milestones & Epics**: Extract sequencing, requirement groupings, and "done-means" definitions into prioritized epics and milestones. **Gate/task issues MUST use the mission-brief format** — Goal / Constraints / Non-Goals / Success Criteria (each criterion with a measurement method) — per the canonical template in `factory-mission`'s `references/mission-brief-template.md`. Milestone descriptions carry the demo sentence + done-means (milestones are grouping containers, not executable units). Issue titles are short work-item names; `[Gx]`/`Mx:` prefixes are forbidden (milestone assignment carries grouping; descriptions carry references).
3. **Deduplication Check**: Fetch existing issues to match task summaries and prevent duplicates.
4. **Push to Q**: Push epics and milestone issues to the tracker via MCP. Stamp appropriate automation-gating and dispatch labels on each generated issue based on AI triage.
5. **Output**: Write a versioned `docs/adlc/product/roadmap.md` linking the local spec elements to the newly created external tracker issues.

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## Invariants & Safety Constraints

1. **Stateless**: The platform holds no queue state of its own. All queries and mutations are performed live via the tracker's MCP/CLI connectors.
2. **Dry-Run Gating**: **No tracker write may occur without dry-run confirmation**. The skill must output a detailed preview of all issues, comments, or label changes, requiring the user to explicitly confirm before execution.
3. **Advisory Scores**: Scores are advisory metadata and never bypass human gates.