Reopen a Closed/Completed Issue for Re-Work

Use this skill only when an issue has already been closed, completed, or cancelled and needs to re-enter the pipeline.

If the issue is still in progress and you want to re-trigger reviewers or reset specialist state, do not use pan reopen — see \"When NOT to Use Reopen\" below.

What Reopen Does

1. Moves tracker status to "In Progress" (not Backlog — agent resumes with existing plan)
2. Resets specialist states — review/test/merge status → pending
3. Removes queue items — clears any stale entries from specialist queues
4. Updates the continue file — appends a "Reopened" breadcrumb with context
5. Fetches tracker comments — injects latest feedback for the agent

Preflight Guard

As of PAN-1115, pan reopen <id> refuses to run when the issue's current tracker state is in-progress-like (In Progress, In Review, Todo, Backlog, Open, etc.) and prints a pointer to the right command for that situation. Re-run with --force to override the guard if you truly want reopen semantics on an already-open issue.

When to Use Reopen

• Issue was marked Done / Closed but follow-up work is needed
• Issue was Cancelled and now needs to be picked back up
• Review passed and merged, but post-merge testing found a regression that warrants a fresh implementation cycle on the same issue
• Agent fast-pathed to done on restart and the issue's tracker state is closed but the work was incomplete

When NOT to Use Reopen

If the issue is already In Progress and one of these is true, use the listed command instead. None of these touch code, git, branches, or PRs — they only reset pipeline state.

Situation	Command
Reviewers are stuck / errored / silently exited and you want fresh ones	pan review restart <id>
You want to kill running reviewers and leave the worker idle	pan review abort <id>
Work agent should pick up where it left off, no state reset needed	just pan start <id>

How to Reopen

Via CLI (recommended for agents/supervisors)

pan reopen PAN-123
# With explicit reason:
pan reopen PAN-123 --reason "Post-merge regression in auth flow"
# Skip confirmation prompt:
pan reopen PAN-123 --force

Via Dashboard API

curl -X POST http://localhost:3011/api/issues/PAN-123/reopen \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"reason": "Post-merge regression found"}'

Via Dashboard UI

Click the Reopen button in the WorkspacePanel (visible when review/test has passed or issue is merged).

After Reopening

1. The issue is now "In Progress" in the tracker
2. Specialist states are all pending
3. STATE.md has a new "Reopened" section with context and tracker comments
4. Start the agent normally: pan start PAN-123

The agent will read STATE.md, see the "Reopened" section, and resume work based on the tracker context rather than fast-pathing to done.

Do NOT Use pan done Until Re-Work Is Complete

After reopening, the agent must complete the requested changes, pass tests, and go through review again before signaling pan done.