refactor(collections)!: consolidate platform backlog collections into project-planning

[Bill Berry (WilliamBerryiii)]

Pull Request

Description

Azure DevOps, GitHub, Jira, and GitLab each carried their own collection, their own backlog manager agent, and near-duplicate copies of the same backlog protocol — discovery, triage, sprint planning, PRD-to-work-item planning, and execution.

What actually differs between trackers is small: the command surface, the field vocabulary, the reference-ID prefix, and the action verbs. Everything structural was common and duplicated four ways.

This PR consolidates backlog capability into project-planning. The shared protocol is owned by skills, and each platform contributes only its delta as a skill reference. A single backlog-manager agent resolves the target platform before dispatching, so a team using more than one tracker no longer has to pick a collection per tracker.

Related Issue(s)

Fixes #2601

Type of Change

Select all that apply:

Code & Documentation:

• Bug fix (non-breaking change fixing an issue)
• New feature (non-breaking change adding functionality)
• Breaking change (fix or feature causing existing functionality to change)
• Documentation update

Infrastructure & Configuration:

• GitHub Actions workflow
• Linting configuration (markdown, PowerShell, etc.)
• Security configuration
• DevContainer configuration
• Dependency update

AI Artifacts:

• Reviewed contribution with hve-builder and addressed all actionable findings
• Copilot instructions (.github/instructions/*.instructions.md)
• Copilot prompt (.github/prompts/*.prompt.md)
• Copilot agent (.github/agents/*.agent.md)
• Copilot skill (.github/skills/*/SKILL.md)
• Copilot hook (.github/hooks/*/*.json)
• Eval spec added/updated for changed AI artifacts (evals/)

Other:

• Script/automation (.ps1, .sh, .py)
• Other (please describe):

Changes

Collections

Ten collections remain. ado, github, jira, and gitlab are retired and their capability folded into project-planning.

Change	Detail
Retired	ado, github, jira, gitlab manifests and markdown
Rewired	12 remaining manifests, marketplace.json, .vscode/settings.json

New skills and agents

Artifact	Role
backlog-management	Platform-agnostic core: planning-file lifecycle, planning-type enum, scope normalization, reference-ID scheme, similarity assessment, three-tier autonomy, content sanitization, resumable state
backlog-plan	Read-only half: discovery, triage, sprint, my-work, task-plan
backlog-execute	Mutating half: add, run
functional-planner	PRD-to-hierarchy planning, no tracker mutation
backlog-manager agent	Resolves platform, classifies workflow, dispatches
functional-planner agent	PRD hierarchy planning

Per-platform deltas live in backlog-management/references/{ado,github,jira}.md.

Retired artifacts

Kind	Count
Agents	7
Prompts	19
Instructions	18

Instruction files drop from 78 to 60. Thirteen platform-specific instruction files that previously loaded through applyTo globs are now skill references, so they load on demand rather than against the always-on context budget.

Preserved ADO workflows

Pull request creation and build information have no cross-platform equivalent and are preserved as skill references rather than retired:

From	To
instructions/hve-core/ado-create-pull-request.instructions.md	backlog-management/references/ado-pull-request.md
instructions/hve-core/ado-get-build-info.instructions.md	backlog-management/references/ado-build-info.md

Documentation

docs/agents/ado-backlog/ and docs/agents/github-backlog/ are replaced by a unified docs/agents/backlog/. ADO-only pages with no cross-platform equivalent — build monitoring, PR creation, PRD planning — are retained. Docusaurus collection cards and configuration are updated.

Other

.github/workflows/gh-code-scanning.yml is corrected to .github/skills/security/gh-code-scanning/, following that skill's relocation. scripts/evals/New-AgentSurfaceSignatures.ps1 emits an alternation covering every declared tracking root, which the multi-platform backlog-manager requires, and no longer treats a Windows path beneath an allowed root as leakage.

Testing

Command	Result
npm run plugin:validate	10 collections, 0 errors
npm run validate:skills	59 skills, 0 errors, 0 warnings
npm run lint:frontmatter	0 errors, 0 warnings
npm run lint:md	482 files, 0 issues
npm run lint:tables	Pass

Acceptance criteria were independently re-verified rather than accepted from the implementation record: collection count, absence of residual retired-collection paths across .github/, plugins/, and extension/, user-invocable values on the five affected skills, story-quality levels, sprint-planning platform neutrality, and Docusaurus collection coverage.

plugins/{ado,github,jira,gitlab} required manual removal — plugin:generate does not prune directories for retired collections, and leaves dangling symlinks that fail the next run. Tracked as follow-up.

Checklist

Required Checks

• Documentation is updated (if applicable)
• Files follow existing naming conventions
• Changes are backwards compatible (if applicable)
• Tests added for new functionality (if applicable)

AI Artifact Contributions

• Used hve-builder review mode to review contribution
• Addressed all actionable findings from the hve-builder review
• Verified contribution follows common standards and type-specific requirements

Required Local Checks

• Local validation aggregate: npm run validate:local
• Documentation validation (if docs changed): npm run validate:docs
• Spell checking: npm run spell-check
• Link validation: npm run lint:md-links

Security Considerations

• This PR does not contain any sensitive or NDA information
• Any new dependencies have been reviewed for security issues
• Security-related scripts follow the principle of least privilege

Content sanitization guards run before any platform-bound mutation, and an inferred platform requires explicit user confirmation before the first mutating call.

Additional Notes

Opened as a draft. Targeted lanes pass; the full validate:local aggregate, spell check, and link check have not been run on this branch.

Generated output is 244 of 544 files. The reviewable surface is the ~300 source files; plugins/ and docs/reference/ are regenerator output and can be skipped.

Parallel PR. This is one of two cut from the same working tree, alongside #2599 (artifact portability). Both branch from main and do not stack. They overlap only in hve-core-installer/SKILL.md and in regenerated output. Whichever merges second should resolve generated conflicts by discarding both sides and re-running plugin:generate, docs:generate, and extension:prepare rather than merging generated files by hand.

Known follow-ups, recorded and not blocking:

• plugin:generate does not prune retired collection directories and leaves dangling symlinks
• docusaurus.config.js hardcodes the collection list and omits installer and rpi — pre-existing at merge-base
• docs:generate stamps ms.date on every page it touches regardless of content change, requiring a manual revert pass after every regeneration
• The four retired Marketplace identities are orphaned with no tombstone mechanism