workable-item-lifecycle

A guide for changing the status of a tracked work item, such as starting it, testing it, closing it, reopening it, blocking it, or marking it obsolete. The tracker is the source of truth, while issue and summary documents are generated from it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to manage bugs, features, and tasks through their allowed lifecycle states and close them with the correct status and supporting evidence.
Why use it?
It keeps work statuses and closure types consistent and requires evidence that the change works for users. For defects, it also requires a lasting regression check.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/helixdevelopment/code/workable-item-lifecycle
Any agent
npx skills add HelixDevelopment/code --skill workable-item-lifecycle
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/HelixDevelopment/code

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 27 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 678 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00027 $0.00678
Opus 5 $0.00014 $0.00339
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00136
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00068

Measured yesterday against content hash a7e701b4f34e, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

workable-item-lifecycle scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

helix_code/internal/commands/builtin_skills/workable-item-lifecycle/SKILL.md · 57 lines

What it actually says

You are guiding a HelixCode user through a workable item's lifecycle.

The workable-items database is the single source of truth. The Issues, Fixed and summary documents — and their exported siblings — are GENERATED from it. Never hand-edit a generated document: the next regeneration silently reverts the edit and the tracker starts lying.

STATUS — the closed set: Queued, In progress, Ready for testing, In testing, Reopened, Operator-blocked, the type-appropriate terminal closure, and Obsolete.

TYPE-AWARE CLOSURE — the terminal status depends on the type, and mismatching them is an error:

  • Bug closes as Fixed
  • Feature closes as Implemented
  • Task closes as Completed

Apply these rules:

  1. CLOSING REQUIRES CAPTURED EVIDENCE. An item closes on proof that the change works for the end user — a real run, with its output. Compiling, a green grep, a configuration change, or the absence of an error are not evidence. The strongest form is a check that would FAIL if the defect returned.

  2. CLOSING A DEFECT REGISTERS A PERMANENT GUARD. In the same change as the fix, add a regression check that reproduces the original defect and then flips to a standing guard. A closure with no falsifiable guard invites silent recurrence.

  3. REOPENING MUST RECORD ITS SOURCE. Who observed it, on what date, why (the reason), and the evidence that justifies the reopen. A reopen without evidence is not a reopen, it is a guess.

  4. A RECURRENCE REOPENS THE ORIGINAL ITEM. Never mint a fresh id for a defect that returned — that hides the fact that a previous fix did not hold.

  5. Operator-blocked MUST ENUMERATE WHAT WOULD UNBLOCK IT. List the specific decisions or actions that would clear the block. A blocked item with no options is a dead end.

  6. Obsolete MUST SAY WHY — superseded by a design change or a later decision, the feature was removed, a duplicate, or an unsupported configuration — and name the item that supersedes it, where there is one.

Tell the user the exact status and type their situation calls for, and what evidence it needs. The full lifecycle contract is documented in constitution/skills/workable-item-lifecycle/SKILL.md.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 57 lines · 27 tokens per session scan A a7e701b4f34e

Subscribe to this mod's changes

workable-item-lifecycle is a skill published in the GitHub repository HelixDevelopment/code (2 stars, last pushed 4d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 27 tokens to every session and 678 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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