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Work on a GitHub issue

Ask Coder to work an issue and it takes the issue from claim to close: it reads the issue, does the work, runs your checks, lands the change, and reports on the issue.

Before you start

  • Run coder in a checkout of the issue's repository.
  • Install the GitHub CLI and sign in: gh auth login.

Ask for it

In a chat on the Mac, in the Terminal, or from a shell:

openagents chat "work on #10051"

"Take OpenAgentsInc/openagents#10051" works too.

What Coder does

  1. Claims it. Reads the issue, its comments, and a few issues it links, and posts a comment saying Coder is working on it.
  2. Works. Starts from the latest default branch (origin/main), in its own worktree, with the issue as its task.
  3. Checks. Runs your repository's checks for what it changed: the tests of each package it touched, plus checks for style and broken links. If they fail, it fixes and checks again, a few rounds at most.
  4. Lands. Commits with the issue's title and a link, then either opens a pull request that closes the issue (the default) or rebases and pushes to main, as the repository says.
  5. Closes. Comments the commit, the files, the checks it ran, and the agent it used, and closes the issue.

It never pushes a change whose checks fail. If it can't finish, it comments what it tried and the failing output, releases its claim, and leaves the issue open with the change in its worktree, so you can pick up from there.

Keep it running

The issue flow runs in the program that started it. Keep the Terminal screen or the command open until it lands; if you close it partway, the claim stays without a closing comment. Esc, Ctrl-C, or Stop stops it and says so on the issue.

Several issues

openagents chat work --issues 10052,10053           # one after another
openagents chat work --issues bug --parallel 2      # a label's open issues, two at once

Each issue gets its own thread and worktree. Coder skips closed issues and issues someone claimed recently.

The repository's policy

A file at .openagents/coder-issues.json tells Coder how to land:

{ "land": "main", "claim_hours": 6, "fix_rounds": 3, "fmt": true, "clippy": true }

Without the file, Coder opens a pull request and runs the tests and the diff checks. --land main or --land pr overrides it for one command.

Next: Ship an iPhone build from your phone.