Skill: Process Inbox

Purpose

Read INBOX.md, parse all todo items, group them into tasks, and append them to tasks.json. Clear the inbox when done.

Trigger

User says something like: "process inbox", "sort inbox", "import todos", or asks you to read/group the inbox.

Steps

1. Read config and data files

• Read todos/config.json — this defines the valid groups, roles, and statuses for this project
• Read todos/INBOX.md (raw dump)
• Read todos/tasks.json (existing tasks — needed to avoid duplicates and to determine the next ID)

If config.json does not exist, use these fallback defaults:

• groups: ["General"]
• roles: []
• statuses: ["todo", "in_progress", "done"]

2. Determine the next task ID

• Find the highest existing numeric ID (e.g. if t-007 exists, next is t-008)
• If no tasks exist, start from t-001

3. Parse inbox items

The inbox is free-form. Items may be:

• Bullet points (- or *)
• Numbered lists
• All-caps sentences (treat as a task)
• Paragraphs (one paragraph = one task)
• Sections under a ## Header (header becomes the group hint)
• Any language — preserve as-is in the description

Parse rules:

• Short standalone lines → title candidate + empty description
• Long blocks of text → first sentence = title, rest = description
• All-caps text → normalize to title case for title, keep original in description
• Code blocks or multi-line commands → treat as a single task, keep full text in description

4. Assign groups and roles

Use the groups defined in config.json. Use judgment to assign the best-fitting group. If no groups are defined, use "General" for everything.

Use the roles defined in config.json. Assign roles that the task is relevant to. Use [] for infrastructure, tooling, or tasks with no specific user-facing role. If no roles are defined in config, always use [].

5. Build new task objects

For each parsed item, create:

{
  "id": "t-NNN",
  "title": "Short descriptive title (max ~60 chars)",
  "description": "Full original text preserved here",
  "group": "<one of the groups from config.json>",
  "roles": ["<zero or more roles from config.json>"],
  "status": "<first non-terminal status from config.json, or 'todo' as fallback>",
  "statusNote": "",
  "createdAt": "YYYY-MM-DD",
  "updatedAt": "YYYY-MM-DD"
}

Use today's date for createdAt and updatedAt.

Choosing status:

• Default to the first non-terminal status in config.statuses for actionable items
• If the item is a question, architectural decision, or choice to be resolved: use "decision" if it exists in config, otherwise use the default
• If the item is a future idea or vague vision with no immediate action: use "futuristic" if it exists in config, otherwise use the default

6. Deduplication

Before adding, check if a task with a very similar title already exists in tasks.json. If yes, skip it and note it to the user.

7. Write tasks.json

Append new tasks to the tasks array. Write the full updated JSON back to todos/tasks.json.

8. Clear INBOX.md

Replace the content of todos/INBOX.md with the clean template:

# Inbox

Drop new todos here in any format — bullets, paragraphs, headers, free text.
When ready, ask Claude to process the inbox.

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9. Report to user

Summarize:

• How many tasks were added and to which groups
• Any items that were skipped (duplicates or unparseable)
• Remind them to open todos/todos.html to review