t1448: make pulse intelligence-first for backlog dispatch

[marcusquinn]

Summary

• make pulse treat auto-dispatch and status:available as hints, not hard gates
• define unassigned + non-blocked issues as dispatchable by default and prioritize by value density and slot utilization
• replace fallback-only language with a cycle baseline that uses evidence (active workers/PR recency) over stale labels

Why

Backlog throughput was blocked by brittle label assumptions (status:available absent => skipped) even when many high-priority unassigned issues existed. This change shifts dispatch behavior from deterministic label gating to intelligence-first triage while preserving safeguards.

Closes #4178

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Documentation
  • Updated workflow documentation for intelligence-first task dispatch and prioritization.
  • Refined issue handling to use evidence-based decisions instead of label-based gates.
  • Enhanced guidance for task decomposition and mission-aware dispatch.
  • Expanded quality and debt control parameters with updated constraints.

[gemini-code-assist]

Summary of Changes

Hello, I'm Gemini Code Assist¹! I'm currently reviewing this pull request and will post my feedback shortly. In the meantime, here's a summary to help you and other reviewers quickly get up to speed!

This pull request refactors the issue dispatching mechanism within the pulse script to adopt an "intelligence-first" approach. Instead of relying on rigid label-based gating, the system now uses labels as hints and prioritizes issues based on evidence of active work, value density, and flow efficiency. This change aims to improve backlog throughput by ensuring that high-priority, unassigned work is dispatched more effectively, even if it lacks specific auto-dispatch or status:available labels, thereby addressing previous bottlenecks caused by brittle label assumptions.

Highlights

• Intelligence-First Dispatching: The system now treats auto-dispatch and status:available labels as hints rather than strict requirements for dispatching issues, shifting to an evidence-based approach.
• Default Issue Availability: Unassigned and non-blocked issues are now considered dispatchable by default, reducing reliance on the explicit status:available label.
• Prioritization by Value Density: A new prioritization scheme has been introduced, focusing on value density and flow efficiency, dispatching merge-ready PRs, critical/high issues, and then other backlog items to maintain worker slot utilization.
• Stale Issue Recovery Enhancement: Improved logic for identifying and recovering stale assigned issues (e.g., unassigning and relabeling to status:available if no recent activity) to prevent work from being blocked indefinitely.
• Candidate Discovery Baseline: The 'dispatch candidate fallback' mechanism has been promoted to a 'candidate discovery baseline,' running in every pulse cycle to proactively identify and prioritize unassigned, non-blocked issues, rather than only as a fallback.

Changelog

• .agents/scripts/commands/pulse.md
  • Modified issue dispatching rules to treat status labels as hints rather than hard gates, verifying activity with evidence.
  • Established unassigned and non-blocked issues as available by default, making status:available optional metadata.
  • Introduced a new prioritization strategy based on value density and flow efficiency for dispatching issues.
  • Updated the gh issue edit command to ensure assignment even if remove-label fails.
  • Renamed the "Dispatch candidate fallback" section to "Candidate discovery baseline" and adjusted its logic to run in every cycle.
  • Revised the example issue search query to exclude status:queued, in-progress, in-review labels and include no:assignee.
  • Updated the suggested comment for intelligence-first dispatches.

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[coderabbitai]

Caution

Review failed

Pull request was closed or merged during review

Walkthrough

Documentation update to .agents/scripts/commands/pulse.md redefining the pulse dispatch workflow. Changes replace strict label-based gating with hints-based dispatch logic, introduce intelligence-first prioritization with evidence-based decision rules, expand lineage-aware dispatch guidance, and revise batch execution strategies for decomposed tasks.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)

Summary

Pulse Workflow Documentation .agents/scripts/commands/pulse.md

Reframed dispatch strategy from label-dependent to hints-based; replaced status:queued/in-progress/in-review gating with signal-plus-evidence verification; reclassified unassigned non-blocked issues as dispatchable by default; updated assigned-issue staleness logic (3h threshold); introduced intelligence-first prioritization, mission-aware dispatch (Step 3.5), lineage-aware subtask dispatch, revised batch strategies (depth-first/breadth-first), expanded quality/debt controls with updated caps and file-count heuristics, and clarified audit-trail requirements via comment-based tracking.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~12 minutes

Possibly related PRs

• feat: pulse CI failure pattern detection — identify systemic workflow bugs #2979: Implements CI failure pattern detection and dispatch behavior modifications that correspond to the pulse.md documentation updates describing CI failure handling.
• t1408.3: Add lineage context to worker dispatch prompts #2989: Adds lineage-aware dispatch blocks and rules that align directly with the expanded lineage-driven dispatch guidance introduced in this documentation update.
• t1346: fix agents looking for workflows/pulse.md — use full path scripts/commands/pulse.md #2459: Updates references to .agents/scripts/commands/pulse.md while this PR modifies the file's contents, creating a direct documentation target relationship.

Suggested labels

enhancement

Poem

🎯 From rigid gates to subtle hints, the pulse now flows,
Intelligence first, as each unassigned work grows,
Evidence whispers where labels once blocked the way,
Lineage threads through subtasks—dispatch with grace, not delay,
Zero debt, pure automation, the DevOps dream bestows!

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title 't1448: make pulse intelligence-first for backlog dispatch' accurately captures the main change: shifting pulse dispatch to an intelligence-first approach rather than label-gate dependency.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	The PR comprehensively addresses all coding requirements from issue #4178: treats labels as hints, enables unassigned issues as dispatchable by default, introduces evidence-based dispatch logic, and optimizes slot utilization.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	All changes are scoped to documentation updates reflecting the intelligence-first dispatch strategy outlined in issue #4178; no unrelated modifications are present.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	No functions found in the changed files to evaluate docstring coverage. Skipping docstring coverage check.

_{✏️ Tip: You can configure your own custom pre-merge checks in the settings.}

✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Post copyable unit tests in a comment
• Commit unit tests in branch bugfix/t1448-intelligence-first-dispatch

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[github-actions]

🔍 Code Quality Report

�[0;35m[MONITOR]�[0m Code Review Monitoring Report

�[0;34m[INFO]�[0m Latest Quality Status:
SonarCloud: 0 bugs, 0 vulnerabilities, 402 code smells

�[0;34m[INFO]�[0m Recent monitoring activity:
Wed Mar 11 22:55:51 UTC 2026: Code review monitoring started
Wed Mar 11 22:55:51 UTC 2026: SonarCloud - Bugs: 0, Vulnerabilities: 0, Code Smells: 402

📈 Current Quality Metrics

• BUGS: 0
• CODE SMELLS: 402
• VULNERABILITIES: 0

Generated on: Wed Mar 11 22:55:54 UTC 2026

---

Generated by AI DevOps Framework Code Review Monitoring

[sonarqubecloud]

Quality Gate passed

Issues
0 New issues
0 Accepted issues

Measures
0 Security Hotspots
0.0% Coverage on New Code
0.0% Duplication on New Code

See analysis details on SonarQube Cloud

[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request refactors the pulse command's task dispatching logic to be more flexible and "intelligence-first". The changes, documented in .agents/scripts/commands/pulse.md, move away from strict label-based gating (e.g., requiring status:available) towards an evidence-based approach where unassigned, non-blocked issues are considered dispatchable by default. The example gh commands for issue discovery and assignment have been updated to reflect this new, more robust philosophy. The overall change appears to be a sound improvement, making the dispatch process less brittle and more effective at managing the backlog.