Drain and reprocess a dead-letter backlog nobody has opened
A letter queue nobody has looked at, classified message by message and either reprocessed or discarded with a reason.
The ticket
Work through a dead-letter backlog, classifying each message and reprocessing or discarding it.
Acceptance criteria
- Every message is classified by failure cause
- Reprocessable messages are replayed and confirmed
- Discarded messages are recorded with a reason before deletion
- Recurring causes are filed as their own tickets
What lands as proof
A classification summary covering every message, so nothing is discarded without a recorded reason.
Why teams defer it
- Reprocessing old messages can cause effects that are no longer wanted, so each one needs judgement.
- The backlog grew because nobody owned it, and this ticket does not by itself fix that.
Questions
- What does the agent actually change?
- The ticket is scoped to one outcome: work through a dead-letter backlog, classifying each message and reprocessing or discarding it. Work that serves that outcome is in scope, and anything outside it is left for a separate ticket, so the pull request stays reviewable.
- How do I know the work is done?
- The pull request carries the evidence, not only the diff. Here that means every message classified, reprocessed or discarded with a recorded reason, so a reviewer can confirm the result without reproducing the work locally.
- How much oversight does this need?
- The run stops for the plan, and the review bar is raised afterwards so that smaller suggestions block the merge too, not only serious findings.