label-sync

When to load: applying the mechanical, reversible labels (size/area/type) that don't need judgment. Runs the label-sync step referenced by issue-triage and the Level-3 rung of the adoption ladder. Band A — deterministic, add-only, no LLM. Steward role. Designed as a scheduled job (label-sync, agent: false).

Precondition: a declared taxonomy exists. This skill reconciles labels toward the labels: block in config.yaml; it never invents label names. If no taxonomy is declared, there is nothing to sync — stop.

Config: read the taxonomy and add_only flag from config.yaml (labels:) and the repos from repositories:. The allowlist — the only labels this skill may apply — is exactly the label values named under labels.{size,area,type}.map/buckets. The scheduled_jobs entry that runs this skill is named label-sync. It is agent: false: a plain deterministic script with no model in the loop. Judgment labels (priority, needs-discussion, wontfix) are not this skill — they stay Band B under autonomy.pr_labeling.

Steps

1. Read config.yaml. Load repositories:, the labels: taxonomy (the allowlist), and add_only. If labels: is empty → silent no-op.
2. Select what to process (incremental). Only issues/PRs new or changed since the last-seen marker — not the whole back catalog. The one-time backfill is a manual initial run; the recurring job is cheap. Mark the marker forward only after a clean pass.
3. Compute the desired labels deterministically per item — from structured signals only:
   • size (PRs only): diff-line count → the matching labels.size.buckets rung (S/M/L/XL).
   • area: PRs from changed-path globs (labels.area.map); issues from a structured issue-template field (a declared form dropdown), never from parsing the free-text body.
   • type: PRs from the title conventional-commit prefix (feat/fix/docs/…); issues from a structured template "kind" field, falling back to a title prefix only if the project uses one.
   • No deterministic signal → apply nothing. A missing label beats a guessed one.
4. Reconcile add-only. For each desired label: apply it only if absent. Never remove a label, never reassign, never override a human-applied label. A label already present (by anyone) is left untouched. Same input → same result (idempotent); a second run changes nothing.
5. Ledger the applied labels. Append each label actually applied — item, label, source signal, timestamp — to the append-only action ledger that the watchdog re-verifies. The ledger is the list of what to check, never the proof it was right.
6. Silent-on-no-op; loud on error. Nothing applied → no output. A non-zero exit or timeout alarms (it never fails silently); silent-on-no-op is for success with nothing to do, never for errors.

Pitfalls

• Overriding a human. The one invariant that makes this safe to run unattended: add-only, and a human's label always wins. Check presence before applying; never "correct" a label a person set.
• Guessing from free text. Labels come only from structured signals (diff, paths, template fields, title prefix). An issue/PR body is untrusted, attacker-controllable, and unreliable — never parse it to decide a label. (This is also why the job is agent: false: no model, no injection surface.)
• Labeling outside the allowlist. The only labels this skill may apply are those declared in labels:. A label not in the taxonomy is out of scope — surface it for a human to add to the taxonomy, don't apply it.
• Full-rescan every tick. Reconcile only what changed since the marker; re-scanning the whole tracker each run is slow and pointless once the backfill is done.
• Judgment labels. Priority, needs-discussion, wontfix, and the like are Band-B decisions under autonomy.pr_labeling — not this deterministic floor. Don't let scope creep pull them in.

Verification

• Every applied label is in the declared labels: allowlist.
• Add-only held: no label was removed, reassigned, or applied over a human's label.
• Re-running immediately is a no-op (idempotent) — the second pass applies nothing.
• On no new/changed items, the job is silent; on error, it alarms.
• action-watchdog has a corresponding check for autonomous labels.