tri triage: five ordered classes, and blocked is tested before actionable (#2156)

docs/now/2026-08-21-triage-five-ordered-classes.md

@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+# NOW -- triage tells blocked from actionable (2026-08-21)
+
+## tri triage: five ordered classes, and blocked is tested before actionable (Closes #2156)
+
+- `tri triage` had three classes and made `actionable` the default, so anything it did not recognise was counted as available work. Three kinds of issue cannot be picked up and finished -- blocked on hardware or a human, research with no checkable end, duplicate or obsolete -- and all three were being advertised. The reported count was an upper bound read as an estimate
+- Now five classes matched in order: actionable, research, tracking, blocked, duplicate. `blocked` is tested before `actionable` on purpose, so no blocked item is offered as available. Measured over 241 open issues: 45 actionable, 0 research, 189 tracking, 7 blocked, 0 duplicate. The seven blocked items were previously inside the actionable count
+- `research` scoring zero is a limitation of the signal, not a finding: the rule reads title form, and this tracker's titles are declarative sentences rather than questions. Reported as measured rather than tuned until the histogram looked plausible
+- The tool prints and exits. Autoclose is forbidden: 80% of the tracker is journal record with no completion condition, and a title regex is not grounds to destroy it. The classification is a composition estimate, never a verdict on one issue, and the output says so
+- Loop helpers now dispatch from `scripts/tri_loop/` via `tri <name>`, with `tri loop-help` listing them. They report and never mutate; keeping them out of `t27c` means a broken helper cannot take the compiler CLI down with it
+- Entry migrated from `docs/NOW.md` to `docs/now/` (the layout #2298 introduced); the original entry was dated 2026-08-14. The branch's own commit had deleted the heading `# NOW -- BNF: the control that measures what ternary is worth (2026-08-09)` while keeping its body, orphaning it; `docs/NOW.md` is restored to master byte-for-byte, so that heading survives

scripts/tri

@@ -345,6 +345,26 @@ if [[ ! -x "$T27C" ]]; then
   echo "tri: local commands still work -- see 'tri help'" >&2
   exit 1
 fi
+# Loop helpers live in scripts/tri_loop/ as Python, and are dispatched before
+# anything is forwarded to t27c. They are separate from the compiler on purpose:
+# they measure and report on the repository, they do not compile it, and none of
+# them mutates anything. Keeping them out of t27c means a broken helper cannot
+# take the compiler's CLI down with it.
+cmd="${1:-}"
+LOOP_DIR="$SCRIPT_DIR/tri_loop"
+if [[ "$cmd" == "loop-help" ]]; then
+  echo "tri loop helpers (report only, never mutate):"
+  for f in "$LOOP_DIR"/*.py; do
+    [[ -e "$f" ]] || continue
+    name="$(basename "$f" .py)"
+    printf '  %-12s %s\n' "$name" "$(sed -n '2s/^"""tri [a-z-]* -- //p' "$f")"
+  done
+  exit 0
+fi
+if [[ -n "$cmd" && -f "$LOOP_DIR/${cmd//-/_}.py" ]]; then
+  exec python3 "$LOOP_DIR/${cmd//-/_}.py" "${@:2}"
+fi
+
 # `t27c suite` is the only subcommand that accepts --repo-root.
 # Map `tri test` to the suite subcommand; pass other commands through unchanged.
 if [[ "$cmd" == "test" || "$cmd" == "suite" ]]; then