qa-lead PR advisories are invisible to dev-lead and the approval gate: the persona marker exempts them, so even "Escalate? yes — fix before merge" is never dispositioned #2202

Problem

The QA agent's (qa-lead) PR advisory is treated as automation noise. dev-lead never responds to it, and pr-review's comment gate never requires a response, so its findings, including escalations it says must be fixed before merge, have no effect on the PR.

Unlabelled on purpose. Whether a persona advisory should count as a required-to-disposition input is a policy decision. Please rule before dev-lead takes this.

Mechanism

• How it posts. qa-lead posts one issue comment as don-petry (personas/qa-lead/persona.yml:172-175). The runner always prepends <!-- persona:qa-lead --> (persona-runner-reusable.yml ~:474, pr_ensure_marker), the recursion guard from feat: implement issue #846 — [Phase 2] Cache the LSP index and enforce the 30s cold-start SLA with auto-skip #860.
• The gate skips it. scripts/lib/maintainer-comment-gate.sh:74: _MAINTAINER_GATE_AGENT_MARKERS includes persona:, so the comment is never counted as needing a response.
• The prompt skips it. prompts/dev-lead/fix-reviews.md:161 lists <!-- persona:… --> among "our own" automation comments that are never answered.
• No trigger fires. scripts/dev-lead-intent.sh:635-640: the author is a human account, not a TRUSTED_BOTS entry, and the body has no trigger phrase, so the result is no-trigger-or-untrusted and nothing runs.
• Escalations go nowhere. prompts/qa-lead/advisory.md:90, 123-134, 164 tell qa-lead to escalate gaps that "need a maintainer's attention before merge" via **Escalate?** yes. Nothing in scripts/ or the workflows reads that line, and the pr-review prompts never mention qa-lead.
• No contract requires a response. interaction-contracts/dev-lead.yml lists no obligation to respond to persona output, and qa-lead's contract emits only comment:advisory-response.

The marker is doing two jobs: preventing persona→persona loops (correct) and exempting the advisory from disposition (unintended).

Proposed acceptance criteria (pending the policy ruling)

1. Split the recursion guard from disposition exemption. persona: stays a recursion guard but is removed from the gate's exempt set, or exempted only when the advisory has no findings, for example Escalate? no and no HIGH/MEDIUM items.
2. dev-lead treats it as review input. fix-reviews dispositions a qa-lead advisory like any reviewer comment (fixed / invalid with reason / deferred to the tracking issue). Each finding gets an outcome, not just the comment.
3. Escalation is enforced. Escalate? yes applies the hold label, or pr-review treats it as a blocking finding, until a maintainer or a fixed disposition clears it.
4. The contract says so. interaction-contracts/dev-lead.yml and qa-lead's contract record the obligation.
5. Tests. A PR whose only open comment is a qa-lead advisory with Escalate? yes is not approvable; one with Escalate? no and no findings is.

Related

• Epic Epic: qa-lead — close the gap between the declared persona and the served one #1643 (qa-lead reach and throughput).
• [qa-lead reach 3/3] persona-runner ignores surface=pull_request — the router-served qa-lead advisory loses its test-surface, budget and already-advised gates #1905 and the pull_request surface (the advisory now runs automatically, so this matters more).
• feat: implement issue #846 — [Phase 2] Cache the LSP index and enforce the 30s cold-start SLA with auto-skip #860 (the recursion marker's origin).
• Companion issue for solution-architect, filed alongside this one.

Filed from a Claude Code session auditing dev-lead gaps, 2026-10-10.