feat: PM-Agent also need to look at PR comments
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From Gitea issue #116.

Authored by the PM agent's worker; the merge gate is the approver. Refs #116.

Agent: pm-agent (issue #116, mode implement)
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@@ -5,9 +5,11 @@ A service that runs in the cluster, reads the issues of
Manager persona this repository already works under**, and runs one worker agent per
assignment that authors the change, runs the merge gate and opens a pull request.
It reacts to issue creation and to comments on issues. Every assignment and every piece of
correspondence travels through the issue thread and the pull request, so the whole record of
what the agent did, and why, is in the same place a human is already looking.
It reacts to issue creation and to comments on issues. It can also — **off by default** —
reply when it is `@`-mentioned on a pull request; see
[Mentions on a pull request](#mentions-on-a-pull-request). Every assignment and every piece
of correspondence travels through the issue thread and the pull request, so the whole record
of what the agent did, and why, is in the same place a human is already looking.
It **never pushes to `main`** and **never merges a pull request**. The merge gate remains the
approver, and a sensitive-path change still needs the human review `ci/approval-policy.sh`
@@ -159,6 +161,111 @@ Job from a committed template. **The model's output is data, never a command.**
---
## Mentions on a pull request
**Off by default** (`PM_PR_MENTIONS: "false"`), and nothing below has been exercised against
the live Gitea — see `decisions/2026-11-07-pm-agent-pr-mentions.md`.
With it on, the dispatcher runs a second, independent pass each poll. A mention of the bot
account on a **pull request** makes the PM read that pull request — its description, its
changed files, its diff, the thread it was mentioned in and the rest of the conversation —
and **reply in that same thread**. Both places count: the pull request's conversation, and
inline review threads against a file and a line.
```
@pm-agent in a PR comment ─▶ discover (notifications, else open PRs)
or an inline review thread │
├─▶ read /issues/{n}/comments, /pulls/{n}/reviews,
│ .../reviews/{id}/comments
├─▶ decide: self-authored? already answered? mentioned,
│ or a follow-up in an already-mentioned thread?
├─▶ assemble the PR + diff + thread, every field fenced
│ and labelled UNTRUSTED
├─▶ ask the model: `comment` or `decline`, and nothing else
└─▶ post the reply in that thread, carrying its own marker
```
**It can only reply.** `implement` and `revise` are not in the vocabulary this path offers
the model, and the decision schema has no `branch` and no `brief` field, so the PM cannot
ask for work in a shape this program would accept. Nothing on the path calls `build_job()`.
The change-authoring half of issue #116 — revise a branch an agent owns, versus open a fresh
branch and PR against `main` for somebody else's — is a separate issue and a separate PR.
**"The same thread."** Inline review comments have a thread identity in Gitea (comments on
the same file and diff position are one conversation). Pull-request conversation comments do
not — they are a flat list — so the issue path's existing convention is reused: the
conversation is **one** thread, and from the first mention in a thread onward, every later
non-bot comment in it continues the conversation without a new mention. A comment made
*before* the mention is not pulled in, and continuation is per thread, not per pull request.
That is a policy choice, not a Gitea fact; it is flagged on issue #116.
**Loop prevention.** There is no author gate — anyone who can comment can start a run, which
is the operator's decision (issue #116, answer 3: *"anyone can talk and have the agent work.
Authorization of changes is through the CI pipeline"*). That makes the self-authored filter
load-bearing, so it is the first check made on every comment and it is structural: a
bot-authored comment can only ever *clear* work, never create it, even if it contains the
bot's own handle. The reply the PM posts also never contains `@`-the-bot. Both are asserted
by the selftest.
**Idempotency.** The record that a mention has been answered is a marker inside the reply:
```
<!-- pm-agent:replied-to=comment-9001,review-comment-77 -->
```
One atomic write with the reply, so the two cannot get out of step. The failure mode chosen,
deliberately, is **at-least-once model call, at-most-once reply**: a crash before posting
costs one repeated decision, a crash after posting is a no-op because the marker is already
in the thread, and a mention is never silently dropped. The marker is only believed in the
bot's *own* comments — pasting it into yours does not silence a mention.
### The cheap mention query, and the token scope it needs
The operator asked for "a way to check for '@'s for the bot account instead of scouring the
entire pull request list and associated threads". That is Gitea's notification list: a
mention subscribes the mentioned account to the thread, and the subscription then raises a
notification for **every later comment on it** — which answers discovery and thread
continuation with one bounded call.
**It will be refused on today's token.** `/api/v1/notifications` sits behind Gitea's
`notification` scope category, and the bot's token is minted
`read:user, write:repository, write:issue, read:package` (above). The dispatcher handles that
explicitly: it logs the refusal, names `read:notification` as the remedy, and falls back to
listing open pull requests, which needs only `read:repository`. Which query answered is in
the log every cycle. To get the cheap one, re-mint the token with `read:notification` added —
same account, same five other scopes, both Secrets updated (`runbooks/pm-agent.md`).
### Look before you turn it on
`PM_PLAN: "true"` makes this path discover, assemble and **print** the exact payload it would
send and the exact thread it would post into, without asking the model and without posting
anything:
```bash
./infra/devcontainer/dev.sh run bash -c \
'kubectl --context k3s-prod -n pm-agent logs deploy/pm-agent | sed -n "/^=\{20,\}/,\$p"'
```
Setting `PM_PLAN` also enables the path, so it is one knob. `PM_DRY_RUN` implies it.
To settle the API shapes by hand before enabling anything (read-only, and the bot's token is
enough for all but the first):
```bash
T=<the pm-agent token>; G=https://gitea.home.keithjackson.dev/api/v1
R=repos/Home-Network/home-network-k3s-impl
curl -s -H "Authorization: token $T" "$G/notifications?all=true&subject-type=pull" | head -c 2000
curl -s -H "Authorization: token $T" "$G/$R/pulls/116/reviews"
curl -s -H "Authorization: token $T" "$G/$R/pulls/116/reviews/1/comments"
curl -s -H "Authorization: token $T" "$G/$R/pulls/116/files"
```
The committed fixtures are `infra/agent/testdata/pr-mention-fixtures.json`; they are written
to Gitea's published 1.24 shapes rather than captured from the server, and the file says so
at the top. Replacing them with a real capture is the cheapest way to close that gap.
---
## What the worker can and cannot do
| | |
@@ -251,6 +358,8 @@ five that matter:
| `PM_MAX_NEW_WORKERS_PER_CYCLE` | `1` | drains a backlog one issue at a time instead of in one stampede the first minute the credentials work |
| `PM_PUSH_ON_RED_GATE` | `false` | a change the gate refused is not pushed; the issue gets the gate log instead |
| `PM_DECISION_MAX_TURNS` | `1` (unset) | turns the triage call may take (1–5). The PM holds no tools, so a second turn is only ever the CLI re-asking after an answer that failed the decision schema. Raise it if a triage error logs `subtype='error_max_turns'` |
| `PM_PR_MENTIONS` | `false` | whether a mention of the bot on a **pull request** triages it. See "Mentions on a pull request" above; read `PM_PLAN` output once before turning it on |
| `PM_PLAN` | `false` | the pull-request path's dry run: print the payload and the intended thread, ask no model, post nothing. Also enables the path. `PM_DRY_RUN` implies it |
**When a triage fails**, the `[error] issue #N: claude exited …` line carries the CLI's result
envelope (`subtype`, `is_error`, `api_error_status`, `num_turns`, `result`) and the tails of