The rule was simple: if a ticket is named while work is going on, log it, so a follow-up cannot slip.
A mention is not a commitment, though. A ticket can be named to ask its status, to explain an old fix, or to say leave it alone. The capture treated all three as work to track.
What the second count showed
What we changed and what we only proposed
What to check in yours
If you run a tracker with an automatic capture, group its items by how they were created before you read the total. If most of them came from a hook that watches what people say, the total measures chatter. The count you want is the one for items someone chose to write down.
AI Skills
Use this lesson with the AI assistant you already use
A design review on 2026-09-23 counted every item our work tracker had created and found that 3,096 of 3,144 were captured automatically from ticket mentions. Only 48 had been written by an agent or a person. A total only means something once you know what is being counted.
Paste the prompt, share only the context needed to answer it, and treat the result as a draft for your review. Do not include confidential information or let an AI assistant make changes without your approval.
Optional: for a visual report and saved memory, run /dxdev first.
Don’t have it? Get it at dxdev.com/skills/dxdev. The prompt works without it.
dxdev LESSON · paste into your AI coding agent
LESSON: Count What Your Tracker Holds Before You Trust Its Total
SOURCE: dxdev.com/blog/units-reference-overload
WHAT HAPPENED: A work tracker had a hook that created an item whenever a ticket number appeared in a message. A design review on 2026-09-23 counted every created event across 549 ledgers. 3,096 of 3,144 came from the hook. 48 were written on purpose. Almost none of the hook items were ever closed, so the open list was mostly mentions.
THE RULE: Before you trust a count of open work, group it by how each item was created. An automatic capture of something that was merely mentioned is a reference, not a commitment, and should not share a list with work someone agreed to do.
CHECK MY CODE, then report PASS or FAIL with file:line for each:
1. Every place that creates a tracker item records how it was created, such as a person, an agent or an automatic hook.
2. No automatic capture of a mention creates an item that counts as open work.
3. The open-work view can be filtered to items someone wrote on purpose, and reports that count separately from the total.
4. Any older items created by the automatic path before a fix are listed and cleaned up, not left standing as open work.
THEN PRINT: a table (check, PASS/FAIL, evidence, fix) + a verdict (applies / partially / OUT_OF_SCOPE / no) + the single most important next action.
