tracker binding: config.role_labels is null — canonical roles run on defaults, loud warning every lane pass

[kyle-sexton]

Problem

.work-item-tracker.json at the repo root has provider: "github" but config.role_labels: null. Every work-items lane pass (attend-queue, work-loop, triage) resolves the three canonical roles — autonomous-eligible / human-gated / recurring — from that config, and a null entry drops each to its documented default (agent-ready / needs-human / recurring) behind a loud warning on every invocation.

Why it matters

• The defaults happen to match this repo's live labels today, so behavior is currently correct — but only by coincidence, not configuration. If the label set is ever renamed, every autonomous lane silently starts querying labels that no longer exist (the exact correctness risk the loud-warning path exists to flag).
• The warning fires on every lane pass, training operators and agents to ignore a warning that is supposed to be actionable.

Fix

Seed explicit config.role_labels in .work-item-tracker.json (the /work-items:setup flow owns this file) with the repo's actual strings:

"role_labels": {
  "autonomous_eligible": "agent-ready",
  "human_gated": "needs-human",
  "recurring_maintenance": "recurring"
}

(Key names above are unverified against the setup schema — confirm against the work-items plugin's binding contract before applying; the substantive ask is explicit values instead of null.)

Evidence

Observed in the attended queue session 2026-07-26: binding read returned {"provider": "github", "role_labels": null}; lane proceeded on defaults with the documented warning.

---

Filed by an AI agent (work-items:attend-queue lane) as raw intake — untriaged.

[kyle-sexton]

Triage outcome (attended queue, independently verified 2026-07-26): routed human-gated + needs-decision, NOT agent-ready. Verification refuted this issue's own framing on several points — corrections for the record:

1. The key is absent, not null. .work-item-tracker.json (tracked, clean, identical at HEAD/origin) contains no role_labels key; the null in this issue's evidence is a jq artifact of a missing key. Absent is the documented, supported, zero-migration state (work-items reference/label-taxonomy.md: absent entries default "so existing repos need zero migration"). This issue frames a sanctioned configuration as a defect.
2. The proposed JSON is wrong on all three keys. The schema uses hyphenated keys and recurring-maintenance (verified in label-taxonomy.md, setup/SKILL.md, and the resolver lib/binding.sh):

"role_labels": {
  "autonomous-eligible": "agent-ready",
  "human-gated": "needs-human",
  "recurring-maintenance": "recurring"
}

3. The local fix contradicts the owning flow's convention. /work-items:setup explicitly instructs "omit entries that keep their default rather than snapshotting defaults into the file." Writing the three defaults is a deliberate convention deviation — a judgment call, not a specified task.
4. The root cause is an upstream contradiction in the work-items plugin, not this repo: label-taxonomy.md says absent entries default with a loud warning, while setup says conforming repos omit default entries — so a correctly-configured repo warns forever. Additionally, no code emits that warning at all, and the seam resolver reads only the human-gated entry (the other two roles are skill-prose obligations with no runtime enforcement).
5. Not delegable: two open decisions (which repo owns the fix; whether to deviate from omit-defaults), failing triage's "fully specified with no open decision" test. Also moot in practice: the work-loop's first_drain_complete is false, so a C3 flip would only round-trip back as a ratify-c3 escalation.

The decision this item now carries: fix upstream in the work-items plugin (resolve the warn-on-absent vs omit-defaults contradiction at the source — fixes every consuming repo), or accept a recorded local convention deviation in this repo. Priority set low: the latent risk is dormant (defaults match live labels, verified) and the warning-noise claim is weaker than filed.

This comment was written by an AI agent on the operator's behalf (work-items:attend-queue lane).

[kyle-sexton]

Re-homed upstream per the triage decision (operator-ratified, attended queue 2026-07-26): the root cause is a contradiction inside the work-items plugin, not this repo's binding — filed as melodic-software/claude-code-plugins#1561 with the verified findings and corrected schema. A local pin of default values would deviate from the plugin's own omit-defaults convention while leaving the contradiction standing fleet-wide.

This comment was written by an AI agent on the operator's behalf (work-items:attend-queue lane).