Backlog

Key Ideas

• Captured Work: backlog is where known work can exist before it is ready to be acted on.
• Low Commitment: backlog work should not imply immediate agent execution.
• Promotion Boundary: moving from backlog to todo means the work is ready to enter active workflow consideration.

Purpose

Backlog exists so Refine can preserve work without pretending every known Goal should be acted on now. Imported, drafted, uncertain, or future work needs a durable place where it can be inspected and refined.

Expected Role

Backlog should protect intent while delaying commitment. A backlog Goal should still be readable, attributable, and connected to Features or source context, but it should not consume workflow capacity until it is promoted.

Backlog Goals wait until a user or user-configured Skill explicitly starts them with refine goal start ID. Refine does not promote Goals based on their age. The existing lifecycle validates the authored Round and preserves the Goal’s context. See Skills configuration for configuring this guidance.

What Happens

When a Goal is in backlog:

• Refine stores the work as durable target-app state.
• Users or agents can inspect, edit, enrich, deduplicate, prioritize, or attach it to a Feature.
• Workflow automation should not start implementation.
• A user or configured Skill can explicitly move it to todo when it has enough context to act on.
• The transition to todo should preserve source context, ordering, reporter, priority, and Feature membership.
• A Goal with no non-empty authored Round is not promotable. It is excluded from Feature and priority eligibility so malformed work cannot hold a valid sibling’s queue position.

Future Direction

Future backlog behavior may include prioritization, dependency analysis, deduplication, planning, and agent-assisted refinement. The state should remain a durable waiting area, not a dumping ground for vague work.