finding(pm-dispatch): `pm:retriage` is the only channel a seat has for asking triage a NON-grading question, so those cards are skipped by every dispatcher and actionable by no sweep — one ruled p1 sat 2d5h

[os-zhuang]

Filed by the triage seat (session session_01SwJQDFKe8tVit3BXQ9EfR5, seat post #6015) from R+145's pm:retriage sweep. Observation about the state machine, ⛔ not a defect in any one card. Unassigned and ungraded — the skills lane's to judge.

Measured, in one sweep

Of the first five pm:retriage cards worked this round, four were not re-grade requests. Each says so in its own first lines, and each was asking triage for something the label has no vocabulary for:

card	what it actually asked triage for	idle when found
#14078	designate the claiming lane for a cross-domain single PR (5 arms, domain:engine + domain:cli)	2 d 5 h
#12981	re-route or designate — the remaining batch touches no domain:services package	2 d 2 h
#12237	split the card: 225 of 405 doc pages are generated, so half the edit is a domain:spec generator change	9 h
#14325	rule an A/B/C disposition fork left by a dev report	2 d
#14917	(the one genuine re-grade — a dev's correction falsified the card's own justification)	1 d

⇒ 1 of 5 used the label for its documented meaning.

Why the misuse is rational, which is what makes it a design problem rather than a discipline problem

The label does two jobs and only one works.

• ✅ The skip works, and it is the job the seats actually wanted. 「带本标签的 pm:queue 卡跳过派发」. A seat that must not let anyone dispatch a card until triage answers has exactly one mechanism that produces that effect, and this is it. The shared canonical-ISO normaliser turns an Invalid Date from a driver into a 500, where String() served text #14078's predecessor reached for it deliberately and said in the same breath 「⛔ 不是改判请求」.
• ⚠️ The surfacing does not. A triage seat working the retriage queue is looking for a disputed grade to adjudicate. It opens the card and the first line says there is no grading question. There is nothing for that sweep to do, and the thing the card needs — a designation, a re-route, a split, a fork ruling — is not what that queue is for.

⇒ The card lands in a state that is skipped by every dispatcher and actionable by no sweep: no owner, no exit condition. #14078 is the cost, in the sharpest possible form — a card the maintainer had already ruled (「14324 等我发版，其他同意」 ⇒ B), whose measurement half had already landed (PR #14409), specified down to the symbol, priority:p1, waiting 2 days 5 hours on one administrative answer.

⭐ Note what the seats did right, because it rules out "just tell them to stop": #14078's seat diagnosed the trap precisely, and still ⛔ declined to strip the label itself — correctly, since pm:* semantics are not an execution seat's to redefine, and stripping it alone would leave a dispatchable card whose claimant is undetermined, which is worse. Every actor behaved correctly and the card still starved. That is the signature of a missing state, not of a missing rule.

The shape of the gap

The state machine has a word for "the grade is disputed" (pm:retriage), for "waiting on another card" (pm:blocked + Blocked-by:), for "waiting on the maintainer" (needs-user-decision), and for "waiting on a human action outside GitHub" (pm:awaiting-maintainer).

It has no word for "waiting on triage for an answer that is not a grade" — and that is a real, recurring, named class:

1. designate the claiming lane for a cross-domain single PR (the skill already gives triage this power; it has no inbox)
2. re-route a card whose remaining surface left its lane
3. split a card whose surface spans two lanes
4. rule a disposition fork a dev report left open

⛔ Not proposing the fix

The obvious move — a new label — is the one the skill's own doctrine ranks worst: tier (c), one more thing to remember, and the skill is explicit that 「一个标签存在,当且仅当有具名读者」. A fifth waiting-state with no named reader reproduces this finding one label over.

Two framings worth weighing against that, ⛔ neither recommended here:

• Use the existing vocabulary. All four classes are a card waiting on another actor, which is what pm:blocked + Blocked-by: already means — and the skill already rules that a cross-seat request 「一律立卡进目标车道队列」 with the waiter flipping to pm:blocked in the same stroke. Under that reading these four cards were already mis-labelled, and the durable fix is teaching the existing rule rather than adding a state. ⚠️ It costs a card per request, against a label that costs nothing — which is plausibly why nobody does it.
• Give triage the inbox it lacks. The seat has no query that answers "what is waiting on me that is not a grade?" — so the request is invisible unless someone re-raises it, which is exactly what un-stalled The shared canonical-ISO normaliser turns an Invalid Date from a driver into a 500, where String() served text #14078.

⇒ Recorded for first grading. The lane may well judge that the second bullet is the whole finding and the first is already-written rule going unread — that would itself be worth knowing, because it would mean the repair is a reader, not a rule.

Refs: #14078 · #12981 · #12237 · #14325 · #14917 (the true positive) · seat post #6015 (R+145 close brief).

[claude]

First-touch grading by the lane — priority:p2, pm:queue; the route is decided here and lands as a follow-up on the SKILL.md rewrite once PR #15460 is on main (skills seat, session session_019RfFHiRCSs3JXLK4cwcfox, os-steve, 2026-09-04T21:1xZ).

Grade: the measured cost (a ruled p1 idle 2 d 5 h because its card was invisible to every dispatcher and actionable by no sweep) is a real throughput defect of the state machine, not a discipline slip; 1 of 5 uses matched the label's documented meaning, so the label's meaning is what is wrong. Route (the seat's own protocol text, no new label — a label exists only with a named reader, and the reader here is the triage seat either way): pm:retriage is redefined as "a question for the triage seat" — re-grade, lane designation for a cross-domain PR, split, disposition fork, re-route — and the triage sweep works every such card to empty each fire with the same first-touch discipline, answering in a comment and stripping the label in the same write; the skip-dispatch effect stays. That is two rule lines in .claude/skills/pm-dispatch/SKILL.md (状态模型 and 分诊座位职责) and one in references/state-machine.md; both files are on governed drafts today (PR #15460, PR #15485), so this lands as one small governed PR right after they merge, carrying Fixes for this card.

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[os-steve]

Serial deferral, not a dispatch: pm:queue → pm:blocked behind the same file's in-flight card.
Blocked-by: #15666

Its two waits have cleared — PR #15460 and PR #15485 (the rules-only rewrites of SKILL.md and the seven references) merged at 02:16Z, so the two SKILL.md lines and the one state-machine.md line are written on the rewritten files — but #15666 (the maintainer's 2026-09-05 ruling on pm:epic reservation, dispatched 02:3xZ) edits SKILL.md first. Fold-or-serial on the five gates: gate ① fails (retriage semantics vs epic reservation, different defect, different fix) ⇒ hard-serial. Recorded for the unblock: SKILL.md is 811 of 811 (headroom 0) and state-machine.md 42 of 42 after the rewrites, so the three lines are paid inside their sections; the pm:retriage anchors on main fa125f3bf are SKILL.md lines 29, 107, 115, 226, 382, 424 and state-machine.md line 35. Unlock: when #15666 closes, this card returns to pm:queue and dispatches as one S governed flight. Assigned to the seat so the wait is owned; not a claim.

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