Set each stage of the issue pipeline to auto or manual

Choose which stages agents run on their own and keep the others in a person's hands.

Prompt

Evaluate and apply this CI technique to my repository: Set each stage of the issue pipeline to auto or manual.

Choose which stages agents run on their own and keep the others in a person's hands.

Read the technique and its source-backed company examples: https://starsling.dev/ci-playbooks/techniques/per-stage-automation.md

Inspect this repository’s CI workflows, build and test commands, dependencies, and recent run timings. Identify where this technique applies and explain the expected benefit using this repository’s evidence.
Measure a baseline from recent comparable runs: elapsed time, queue time, runner minutes and failures where available. If data is unavailable, say what cannot be measured.
Compare relevant company approaches, checking prerequisites, platform differences and tradeoffs. Rank applicable options by evidence, fit and measurable opportunity; do not present company results as predictions for this repo.
Recommend the smallest safe change, show what checks and fallback paths remain, and ASK ME WHICH CHANGE TO APPROVE BEFORE EDITING ANY FILES.
Only after approval, work on a new feature branch, make one reversible change, and open a reviewable pull request. Never merge or push to a default or protected branch.
Keep required checks, test coverage, deployment and release behavior intact. Validate the change and compare equivalent runs where possible; report limitations and what should be monitored after merge.

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How Mastra used this technique

Read what Mastra changed and follow the original sources.

Set each stage of the issue pipeline to auto or manual

Translated to GitHub Actions

What Mastra built: Mastra Factory runs Intake, Triage, Planning, Build, Review and Done on a board, and every step runs in manual or auto mode.
Your GitHub Actions version: Set each stage of your issue pipeline to auto or manual, with triage automatic while planning, implementation and review stay manual.

Mastra Factory connects GitHub, Linear and Slack to a board that runs Intake, Triage, Planning, Build, Review and Done, and every step runs in manual or auto mode. Mastra started with full automatic mode, where an issue ran through each stage until review. Importing a backlog that way produced bursts of work, so Mastra made each stage configurable. For example, triage can run automatically while planning, implementation and review remain manual, and bugfixes can flow through automatically while feature requests do not. The two figures Mastra's post gives alongside this setting are Factory-wide: the share of its PRs and issues Factory has handled since July, and the weekly volume of issues and PRs the pipeline works through.

Since we introduced Factory in alpha in July, it's automated 25-35% of our PRs and closed 50-60% of our issues. Source

We see over 100 opened issues per week, and merge around 200-250 PRs. Source

Use it when: Agents open pull requests faster than the team can review them, or a backlog import floods the pipeline.
Before applying it: An incorrect assumption upstream carries into every later stage, so automate the stages with the clearest inputs first and compare several weeks of results before widening.
GitHub Actions adaptation: Compare the source system with your own workflow before applying this translation.

How Mastra used this technique

Set each stage of the issue pipeline to auto or manual

Company Playbooks