Generated Backlog Statistics

July 26, 2026

Made Abbey Root's backlog completion summary deterministic and integrated its freshness into the session workflow.

Tags: Abbey Root • Abbey Framework • Developer Toolkit • Planning

Generated Backlog Statistics

Summary

Abbey Root’s backlog now begins with a generated summary of complete, pending, and total task-list entries. The summary is derived from the backlog itself, so it improves visibility without becoming a second source of planning truth.

The new abbey backlog refresh command owns only a clearly marked block. abbey review warns when that block needs attention before commit, and abbey end verifies it during final read-only session certification.

Accomplishments

• Added deterministic backlog checkbox counting.
• Added safe refresh and read-only check commands.
• Preserved all human-maintained backlog content outside the generated markers.
• Rejected malformed and duplicate marker structures without rewriting them.
• Made repeated refreshes produce no file change.
• Added regression coverage for counts, formatting, missing and malformed blocks, stale data, and idempotence.
• Documented the generated planning interface and synchronized CLI metadata.

Lessons Learned

• abbey end is a post-commit certification command, so it should verify generated planning data rather than mutate it.
• A reusable refresh command plus checks at workflow boundaries keeps ownership explicit and avoids duplicated counting logic.
• Portable shell tooling should not pass multiline values through macOS awk -v; rendering bounded lines individually is simpler and deterministic.

Next Steps

• Evaluate the workflow messages through normal sessions before expanding this into a broader generated planning-summary command.