Issue Tracking

First-class task tracking with acceptance criteria, lifecycle management, and branch integration.

Overview

Trellis has built-in issue tracking that integrates directly with the VCS. Issues have lifecycle states, acceptance criteria, automatic branch creation, and decision trace linkage.

Creating Issues

trellis issue create -t "Add Python parser" -P high -l parser \
  --desc "Support Python AST parsing" \
  --ac "test:bun test test/semantic/python" \
  --ac "Handles decorators and async functions"

Issues default to backlog status. Use --status open to create them as ready for work.

Issue Lifecycle

backlog → open → in_progress → paused → in_progress → closed
                     ↑                        |
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# Triage: move from backlog → open
trellis issue triage TRL-1

# Start working (auto-creates branch, auto-assigns)
trellis issue start TRL-1

# Pause and resume
trellis issue pause TRL-1
trellis issue resume TRL-1

# Run acceptance criteria
trellis issue check TRL-1

# Close (requires tests pass + confirmation)
trellis issue close TRL-1 --confirm

Updating Issues

trellis issue update TRL-1 --title "New title" \
  --desc "Updated description" \
  --status queue -P high \
  -l label1,label2 \
  --assignee agent:cascade

Listing & Filtering

trellis issue list
trellis issue list --status backlog
trellis issue list --status queue
trellis issue active