groom-backlog

groom-backlog is a skill for Claude Code from Sassy-Dog/sassydog-skills. It costs 165 tokens per session (8,454 once invoked), scanned B, original, Apache-2.0.

A backlog-refinement process for turning open software issues into complete work instructions. An issue is marked Ready only when a developer starting with no prior conversation can implement it.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to review open issues, define their requirements and acceptance conditions, and either mark them Ready or record why they are being postponed.
Why use it?
It removes missing details and ambiguity from issues, so another developer or automated coding agent can pick them up without repeated clarification.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable. Also seen: reads .claude/ paths; mentions CLAUDE.md; mentions subagents.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the sassy-dog plugin — 21 skills, 10 agents shipped together

Good fit Use it to review open issues, define their requirements and acceptance conditions, and either mark them Ready or record why they are being postponed.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add Sassy-Dog/sassydog-skills
Claude Code
/plugin install sassy-dog

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install sassy-dog, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 21 skills, 10 agents.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for groom-backlog

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sassy-dog/sassydog-skills/groom-backlog/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/sassy-dog/sassydog-skills/groom-backlog)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sassy-dog/sassydog-skills/groom-backlog"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sassy-dog/sassydog-skills/groom-backlog/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for groom-backlog

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/sassy-dog/sassydog-skills/groom-backlog"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/sassy-dog/sassydog-skills/groom-backlog.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 165 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 8,454 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00165 $0.08454
Opus 5 $0.00082 $0.04227
Sonnet 5 $0.00033 $0.01691
Haiku 4.5 $0.00016 $0.00845

Measured 5d ago against content hash dc6bbf542767, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

groom-backlog scanned grade B with 1 finding 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 5d ago.

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.

Reads agent configuration directoriesmediumAgent snooping

.claude/, .codex/, .gemini/ hold keys, settings and other credentials a mod has no legitimate need for.

!`root="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null)"; echo "CONFIG_SOURCE: ${root:-<not a git repo>}"; cat "$root/.claude/sassy-dog/groom-backlog.md" 2>/dev/null || echo "NO_CONFIG"`
skills/groom-backlog/SKILL.md · 565 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 565 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Groom-Backlog

Groom the backlog until every issue is either Ready — a cold sub-agent could ship it — or explicitly parked with a named reason.

Groom-backlog owns content quality; sequencing and dispatch belong to dispatch-ready. The two share one contract: Ready means dispatchable. Nothing reaches Ready that you would not hand to a worktree agent with zero conversation context.

Formerly groom-it, and fill-it before that. The "groom it" and "fill it" triggers still resolve here.

1. Repo config

!root="$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null)"; echo "CONFIG_SOURCE: ${root:-<not a git repo>}"; cat "$root/.claude/sassy-dog/groom-backlog.md" 2>/dev/null || echo "NO_CONFIG"

Check CONFIG_SOURCE before using any of this. It is the repo root resolved from the session's working directory at skill-load time — not necessarily the repo you are about to act on — and cwd resets between Bash calls, so you cannot influence it. If it names a repo other than the one you are working in, discard the block above, read that repo's own .claude/sassy-dog/groom-backlog.md by absolute path, and use that instead. Config is meant to be applied exactly as written, so the wrong one silently applies another repo's rules: on 2026-08-18 two agents shipping in sassydog-routines and sassydog-skills were each handed platform's Terraform gates, and caught it only by noticing the mismatch themselves.

Frontmatter supplies gotcha_summary, the optional board and stacked_prs blocks, and the optional execution_site — the name this checkout answers to, used by rubric #9 to propose a site label rather than invent one. An absent execution_site is not a defect: it means this checkout answers to no particular name, so rubric #9 asks instead of proposing. Contract: sassy-dog:setup-configreferences/config-contract.md.

If it reads NO_CONFIG, first check for a stranded pre-rename config: if .claude/sassy-dog/groom-it.md exists, this repo is configured but predates the groom-itgroom-backlog rename — say exactly that, route to sassy-dog:setup-config (update mode, it performs the config rename), and stop rather than running degraded. Never read the old filename directly.

Read the full file on GitHub · 565 lines

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. 5d ago Changed · +128 lines · +26 tokens per session dc6bbf542767
  2. 6d ago Changed · +5 lines 6dfb67639394
  3. 11d ago First seen · 432 lines · 139 tokens per session scan B 1d688ed71f77

Subscribe to this mod's changes

groom-backlog is a skill published in the GitHub repository Sassy-Dog/sassydog-skills (0 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 165 tokens to every session and 8,454 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (reads agent configuration directories). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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