Round 2 review found two ways the "a human could merge this right now" invariant still leaked, both of which let state:needs-human land on a PR the button would refuse. The check-rollup classifier enumerated the outcomes that block and defaulted the rest to SUCCESS, so ERROR, CANCELLED and STALE fell through into green. Inverted to an allow-list of the outcomes that DON'T block (SUCCESS, NEUTRAL, SKIPPED, plus the pending set); everything else, including an outcome neither enum has today, blocks. The rollup mixes CheckRun.conclusion with StatusContext.state and an outcome the list forgets is one we cannot certify as mergeable — a false FAILURE parks the PR on the agent, a false SUCCESS invites a bad merge. 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 the jq itself was untestable. Once CANCELLED blocks, superseded runs must be dropped first — a re-run does not evict the run it replaced, and judging every entry would strand every re-run PR in needs-rebase. Each context now collapses to its newest entry, keyed on workflow + job name because a bare job name is only unique within its workflow. 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: a round that was both unfinished and staled came out needs-human with nothing bound to the head. The whole round is now collected before any precedence is applied, STALE ahead of MISSING. The MISSING-yields-to-an-explicit-human-request rule is untouched. Fixtures 29 -> 44, pinning the whole check-outcome enum, the supersede rule in both orders, and the mixed round at both ends of BOTS. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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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 merge —
CONFLICTING, 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:bootstrap |
commands/bootstrap.sh — hardening a pristine server into a node |
scope:users |
commands/users-* — the root-door model, apply/status, close-root |
scope:runner |
commands/runner-* — GitHub runner install/remove/repoint/status |
scope:coolify |
commands/coolify-* — Coolify and its backup install |
scope:db |
commands/db.sh — dump/restore and the round-trip proof |
scope:installer |
install.sh — how rig itself lands on a machine |
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:bootstrap" --color C5DEF5 --description "bootstrap — hardening a pristine server into a node" --force
gh label create "scope:users" --color C5DEF5 --description "users-* — root-door model, apply/status, close-root" --force
gh label create "scope:runner" --color C5DEF5 --description "runner-* — GitHub runner lifecycle" --force
gh label create "scope:coolify" --color C5DEF5 --description "coolify-* — Coolify and backup install" --force
gh label create "scope:db" --color C5DEF5 --description "db.sh — dump/restore" --force
gh label create "scope:installer" --color C5DEF5 --description "install.sh — how rig lands on a machine" --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