> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://pm-plugin.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# /pm:triage — Screen an Ask Against the Backlog Before It Becomes an Epic

> PM has always accepted work; it did not triage it. Dedup was identity-only, so the same ask under a different name always landed twice. Triage surfaces the twin first.

Run this **before `add-epic`**, every time an ask arrives — an issue you are about to mirror, a request in conversation, a line off a roadmap doc.

## The gap it closes

The conductor has always **accepted** work. It did not **triage** it. `add-epic` validates the id, the lane and the priority, refuses a duplicate `externalId`, and appends.

The only dedup that existed was **identity-based** — same id, or same `externalUrl`. That correctly stops `/pm:sync` from mirroring one issue twice, and it does nothing at all about *the same ask arriving under a different name*. That failure has exactly one symptom: **the backlog only ever grows, and every entry looks equally legitimate.**

<Note>
  Measured in PM's own repository: the `change-registered-under-two-lanes` integrity check reports **four live pairs** that are one change registered twice, under different lanes and different names. Identity dedup found none of them. A human reading the backlog did.
</Note>

## Getting the candidate set

```bash theme={null}
conductor.mjs triage "<the ask, in its own words>"
```

`--limit N` (default 5) bounds how many candidates come back. It must be a positive integer — a valueless or non-numeric `--limit` is **refused rather than coerced**, and any other flag is rejected by name. A wrong bound on a recall device silently hides the twin the whole command exists to surface.

## The engine computes candidates and never a verdict

This is the line the whole design turns on, and the command states it in its own output: **`verdict` is always `null`.**

| The engine decides (mechanical)                           | You decide (judgment)                    |
| --------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------- |
| which epics share **distinctive** vocabulary with the ask | whether one of them is **the same ask**  |
| which lane the repo's routing rules pick                  | whether that lane is right *here*        |
| the backlog's shape as a set — counts, what's active      | where this sits against what's in flight |
| which candidates are already `superseded`                 | consolidate, decline, or register        |

PM is an instruction layer. An engine that decided two asks were "the same" would be making a semantic judgment on prose, which is exactly the thing it must not do — so it hands you a ranked, auditable candidate set and stops.

## Why the ranking has no stoplist

Scoring is **IDF over the backlog itself** — `ln((N+1)/df)`. A term's weight comes from how rare it is *in your own epics*, so house vocabulary self-neutralizes: "Implementation Plan" in a title does not drag half the index in, and nobody maintains a curated stopword list that goes stale.

Every candidate carries **the tokens that earned its score**. That is what makes a lexical surface auditable rather than an oracle — you can see at a glance that a match is real, or that it rode in on one shared word.

<Warning>
  Triage is **not** a substitute for the `externalUrl` check during sync, and that check is not a substitute for triage. They catch different things: identity dedup stops the same *item* landing twice; triage surfaces the same *ask* under a different name. Run both.
</Warning>

## Declining an ask

An ask you screen and decide against ends the way all work in PM ends — with a recorded disposition carrying its reason, never by deletion:

```bash theme={null}
conductor.mjs update-epic <id> --status archived --outcome declined --reason "<why not>" --no-deferrals
```

`declined` is a terminal **outcome**, not a status — `archived` already means terminal, so nothing about status-driven behavior changes. It records that a judgment was made, which is precisely what deletion destroys.

<Card title="Epics & Lanes" icon="layers" href="/concepts/epics-and-lanes">
  What happens to an ask once you decide to register it.
</Card>


## Related topics

- [Changelog — What's New in Each pm Release](/changelog.md)
- [PM Quick Start: Initialize, Triage, and Start Building](/quickstart.md)
- [/pm:status — Display the Current Project Briefing](/commands/status.md)
- [Epics and Lanes: How PM Organizes Work](/concepts/epics-and-lanes.md)
- [/pm:feedback — File a Bug Report or Feature Request](/commands/feedback.md)