Approved Backlog Watchdog

Scans the Mission Control data stores for approved items that have not progressed to shipped/distributed within 24 hours. Emits a structured alert per stalled item.

When to Use

• Periodic pipeline health check (manual trigger or cron).
• When asked "is anything stuck in the pipeline?" or "what's been approved but not shipped?"
• Before distribution planning sessions.

What This Skill Does

1. Reads data/approvals.json for items with status: 'approved'.
2. Reads data/articles.json for articles with stage: 'approved' or review.verdict: 'approved'.
3. Reads data/content-runs.json for runs with status: 'ready' or status: 'approved'.
4. For each item, checks if updatedAt is more than 24 hours ago.
5. Emits one alert per stalled item with: id, title, age, current status, recommended action.

What This Skill Does NOT Do

• Does not publish, distribute, or modify any content.
• Does not send messages to external channels (Telegram, email, etc.).
• Does not install or fetch anything from the network.
• Does not trigger other skills or agents.

Output Format

## Backlog Watchdog Alert — [date]

[X] items stalled beyond 24h:

### [item title]
- ID: [id]
- Type: [approval | article | content-run]
- Status: [current status]
- Age: [Xd Xh]
- Last updated: [timestamp]
- Recommended: [escalate | assign | deprioritize]

If no items are stalled, output:

✅ Pipeline clear — 0 items stalled beyond 24h.

Acceptance Test

• Given data/articles.json contains one article with stage: 'approved' and updatedAt set to 30 hours ago.
• When the skill is invoked.
• Then output includes exactly one alert for that article with age > 24h and recommended action.
• Pass: alert present, age correct, no false positives from non-approved items.

Edge Cases

• If data files are empty or missing, report pipeline clear — do not error.
• If updatedAt is missing, treat as unknown age and flag for manual review.
• Ignore items with status: 'rejected' or stage: 'retired'.