cast/LABELS.md
dan-claude-bot d8f73f446d fix(labels): unknown check outcomes and mixed rounds must not read green
Round 2 of #128. Two blockers from the bot panel, both real holes in the
invariant this PR exists to establish.

The check-rollup classifier enumerated the outcomes that block and
defaulted everything else to SUCCESS, so ERROR, CANCELLED and STALE fell
through to green. Inverted to an allow-list of the outcomes that do NOT
block — SUCCESS, NEUTRAL, SKIPPED and the pending set — with everything
else blocking. The rollup mixes two closed enums (CheckRun.conclusion and
StatusContext.state) and the costs are asymmetric: a false failure parks
the PR on the agent, who looks; a false success invites a human to merge a
tree that will not merge. Superseded runs are dropped first, each context
collapsing to its newest entry keyed on workflow + job name, so a re-run
does not strand its own PR in needs-rebase. The classifier also moved out
of main() into checks_state(), which is why no fixture caught this — it
was inline in the fetch loop and could only ever be injected pre-decided.

decide_state() returned from inside the bot loop on the first MISSING, so
a STALE belonging to a later bot in BOTS was never read, and a round that
was both unfinished and staled came out needs-human over a head nobody had
reviewed — the original bug wearing a different hat. The whole round is
now collected before any precedence is applied, STALE checked before
MISSING. The MISSING-yields-to-an-explicit-human-request rule is untouched.

Fixtures 29 -> 44, pinning the check-outcome enum, the supersede rule at
both orderings, and the mixed round at both ends of BOTS.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-20 16:06:41 +00:00

7.9 KiB

Labels

How this repo uses GitHub labels. The taxonomy is shared across the heavy-duty repos (box, rig, cast) — only the scope: set differs per repo, because it names this repo's actual surfaces.

State — who is the ball with? (PRs, exactly one)

Every open PR carries exactly one state: label, and it answers the only question a board scan actually asks: who is this PR waiting on? The states mirror the review loop this repo runs — PRs open as drafts, three reviewer bots pick up ready PRs with reviews requested, each round is answered in a single reply, and a human takes the final review.

Label Color Waiting on Enters when Leaves when
state:building #FBCA04 the coding agent, still building PR opened as draft marked ready + bot reviews requested
state:bots-reviewing #1D76DB the reviewer bots to finish the round ready with reviews requested, or fixes pushed and reviews re-requested all three bots have reviewed the round
state:addressing #D93F0B the coding agent to reply and push fixes all bots reviewed the round, not all approved the single round-reply is posted and fixes pushed
state:needs-rebase #B60205 the coding agent to rebase or fix the branch does not merge — GitHub says CONFLICTING, or a check has failed it merges cleanly and checks are green again
state:needs-human #8250DF the human reviewer the PR could be merged right now: mergeable, checks not failing, three formal head-current approvals — and the human review is requested merged — or changes requested, which cycles back to state:addressing

bots-reviewing and addressing are deliberately distinct: staleness in the first means poke the bots, staleness in the second means the agent dropped the ball. Collapsing them loses exactly the information a sweep needs.

state:needs-human means one thing: a human could merge this right now. Anything that makes that false outranks the review request that put it there, because the label is the only signal a maintainer scanning the board (or a phone) actually reads — and a label that says "your turn" on an unmergeable PR is worse than no label at all. Two things therefore take precedence over an explicit human request:

  • it does not mergeCONFLICTING, or a failing check → state:needs-rebase
  • nobody reviewed this head — every approval staled by a push → state:addressing, because the agent owes a re-request

The second is the more dangerous of the two: with a conflict, GitHub at least disables the merge button, while a staled-approval PR reads green, mergeable and "waiting on the human" over code no reviewer has seen.

UNKNOWN mergeability is deliberately not treated as unmergeable. GitHub reports it for about a minute after every merge while it recomputes, and flapping every open PR through needs-rebase on each merge would be worse than the bug this precedence fixes.

An unfinished round still yields to an explicit human request — a maintainer pulling a PR to themselves early is a deliberate act. MISSING (nobody has reviewed yet) and STALE (everyone reviewed something else) are different facts and are treated differently.

Cross-cutting (PRs and issues)

Label Color Meaning
stale #B60205 No activity for 48h. Sweep-managed, never hand-applied. state:building + stale is precisely a forgotten draft.
blocked #6A737D Waiting on another PR or issue to land first. Quiet legitimately — the staleness sweep skips it.
release #0E8A16 Release flow, versioning, and packaging work.
merge-next #0E8A16 Head of the merge queue — merge this one next. Queue order is intent (which PR lands first, given how they conflict), so the reconciler never sets it: you or the agent maintaining the queue do. The reconciler only clears it, the moment the PR stops being something a human could merge — so it cannot go stale the way state:needs-human did.

Scope — which surface? (PRs and issues, any number)

All scopes share one calm color, #C5DEF5 — scopes locate, states alert.

Label Covers
scope:capture draft.ts, capture.ts — reading the live world into a manifest
scope:apply apply.ts, diff.ts, destroy.ts — reconciling the manifest onto Coolify
scope:secrets secrets.ts, age handling, the encrypted state repo
scope:fleet fleet.ts, inventory.ts, server.ts — placement and the server side
scope:manifest manifest.ts, resolve.ts, envtemplate.ts — the manifest language itself
scope:coolify-api coolify.ts, the OpenAPI reference — the client surface

Issue types

bug, enhancement, documentation — issues only. PRs carry their type in the conventional title (feat:, fix:, docs:), so typing a PR with a label would just say the same thing twice, drifting apart eventually.

Maintenance

State labels are written by automation, never by hand. Every state above is derivable from GitHub's own facts — the draft flag, requested reviewers, review states, push timestamps — so the labels workflow (.github/workflows/labels.yml) recomputes the state and reconciles labels statelessly, on a 15-minute cron plus PR events. A hand-moved label is a lie waiting to happen; the workflow asserts the effective state instead. scope: labels on PRs are applied from the changed paths by actions/labeler (.github/labeler.yml); CONTRIBUTING.md says who sets what.

The same workflow bootstraps the taxonomy: a manual dispatch creates any missing label idempotently. To create them by hand (needs push access):

gh label create "state:building"       --color FBCA04 --description "PR is a draft — the coding agent is still building" --force
gh label create "state:bots-reviewing" --color 1D76DB --description "Waiting on the bot reviewers to finish the round" --force
gh label create "state:addressing"     --color D93F0B --description "All bots reviewed — coding agent owes the single reply + fixes" --force
gh label create "state:needs-rebase"   --color B60205 --description "Does not merge — conflicts or failing checks; the agent owes a fix" --force
gh label create "state:needs-human"    --color 8250DF --description "Mergeable, green, all bots approve — waiting on the human reviewer" --force
gh label create "merge-next"           --color 0E8A16 --description "Head of the merge queue — merge this one next (set by hand/agent, cleared here)" --force
gh label create "stale"                --color B60205 --description "No activity for 48h — needs a poke (sweep-managed)" --force
gh label create "blocked"              --color 6A737D --description "Waiting on another PR or issue to land first" --force
gh label create "release"              --color 0E8A16 --description "Release flow and version/packaging work" --force
gh label create "scope:capture"        --color C5DEF5 --description "draft/capture — reading the live world into a manifest" --force
gh label create "scope:apply"          --color C5DEF5 --description "apply/diff/destroy — reconciling onto Coolify" --force
gh label create "scope:secrets"        --color C5DEF5 --description "secrets, age, the encrypted state repo" --force
gh label create "scope:fleet"          --color C5DEF5 --description "fleet/inventory/server — placement" --force
gh label create "scope:manifest"       --color C5DEF5 --description "manifest/resolve/envtemplate — the manifest language" --force
gh label create "scope:coolify-api"    --color C5DEF5 --description "coolify.ts + OpenAPI reference — the client" --force
# delete is not an upsert: a label that is already gone exits non-zero. Swallow
# that, so this block converges on re-run instead of erroring after first success.
for L in duplicate invalid question wontfix "help wanted" "good first issue"; do
  gh label delete "$L" --yes 2>/dev/null || true
done