Batch-promote the Brain vault's inbox.md into real notes. Use when inbox.md holds roughly 5 entries or more, or when the user asks to triage, file, or clear the brain inbox.
Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.
Are you the author of Triage?
Add the live security badge to your README. It updates with every re-scan.
[](https://www.skillsdirectory.com/skills/cfirz-triage)
---
name: triage
description: Batch-promote the Brain vault's inbox.md into real notes. Use when inbox.md holds roughly 5 entries or more, or when the user asks to triage, file, or clear the brain inbox.
---
# Triage the Brain inbox
Turn accumulated `inbox.md` captures into notes. Triggered by a **threshold (~5 entries), not
a schedule** — a review cadence is an explicit non-goal of this vault.
Read [CONVENTIONS.md](../../../CONVENTIONS.md) before writing anything. It owns the frontmatter
schema and the description rules; this skill only covers the promotion procedure.
## Procedure
1. **Read** this vault's [inbox.md](../../../inbox.md) and the current index in
[README.md](../../../README.md).
2. **Group** the entries. Several captures often turn out to be one fact with three symptoms —
that is one note, not three.
3. **Decide a home per group**, by lifetime and scope:
- `lessons/` — transferable; stays true on a different machine.
- `machine/` — this box only: versions, ports, absolute paths, install quirks.
- `projects/` — a pointer fact about one codebase. Link to its `CLAUDE.md`, never
duplicate what that file already says.
- `ideas/` — a pitch, not a plan.
- **Nothing** — captures that turned out to be one-offs, or that the code already records.
Dropping an entry is a valid outcome; say which ones you dropped and why.
4. **Check for an existing note first.** Sharpening one note beats adding a fifth near-duplicate.
`rg "^description:" <path-to-this-vault>/<folder> -g "*.md"` — scoped, per
[CONVENTIONS.md](../../../CONVENTIONS.md).
5. **Write** each new note from `templates/<type>.md`. Filename stem == `name` == wikilink
target. Link liberally; a `[[slug]]` with no file yet is a note worth writing, not an error.
6. **Update the index** in [README.md](../../../README.md) — hand-written and canonical. A note
that is not in the index does not exist.
7. **Clear** the promoted entries out of `inbox.md`, leaving anything you deliberately deferred.
8. **Report**: notes created, notes sharpened, entries dropped and why.
## Do not
- Do not invent a tag. A tag exists once a **third** note needs it.
- Do not create a subfolder inside a type folder — it breaks scoped search.
- Do not delete a note for being outdated. Prefix its description with `STALE (YYYY-MM) — `
and set `status: stale`.
Related: `capture` skill, [CONVENTIONS.md](../../../CONVENTIONS.md)
