Reaction recipes

Reactions are configured under reactions: (global) or projects.*.reactions: (per-project). Every recipe here uses the correct schema field names; see the Reactions reference for the full list of keys and their defaults.

Recipe: Watch-only mode

Disable all automated agent messages while keeping notifications active. Useful during onboarding or in sensitive projects where you want to observe before letting AO act:

reactions:
  ci-failed:
    auto: false
  changes-requested:
    auto: false
  bugbot-comments:
    auto: false
  agent-idle:
    auto: false

auto: false suppresses the send-to-agent action but does not silence notifiers. Reactions whose default action is notify (like agent-stuck, agent-exited, and all-complete) continue to fire their notifications regardless of this flag.

Recipe: Enable auto-merge

approved-and-green defaults to auto: false (notify-only). Opt in explicitly:

reactions:
  approved-and-green:
    auto: true
    action: auto-merge

Recipe: Custom CI failure message

Override the default message to give the agent more precise recovery instructions:

reactions:
  ci-failed:
    message: |
      CI is failing. Run `pnpm test` locally and fix the failing tests before pushing again. Prioritise type errors first.

The two-pass CI behavior still applies: AO sends your custom message on the first pass (transition), then follows up in the next poll cycle with a second message listing every failing check by name and URL. Your message override affects only the first pass — the structured check list fires regardless.

Recipe: Aggressive escalation

Tighten the retry and escalation windows for urgent projects where you want fast human handoff:

reactions:
  ci-failed:
    retries: 1
    escalateAfter: "5m"
  changes-requested:
    retries: 1
    escalateAfter: "5m"

With retries: 1 and escalateAfter: "5m", AO will escalate after one failed recovery attempt or five minutes — whichever comes first.

Recipe: Ignore bugbot noise

Keep human changes-requested reactions fully active but silence automated bot review nudges:

reactions:
  bugbot-comments:
    auto: false

AO identifies bot comments by author login. The current hardcoded bot list in scm-github includes cursor[bot], github-actions[bot], codecov[bot], and sonarcloud[bot]. Any review comment from these accounts triggers bugbot-comments rather than changes-requested. Setting auto: false here stops AO from nudging the agent about bot feedback while leaving human review comments fully active.

Recipe: Per-project overrides

Suppress a noisy notification for one project while leaving everything default for others:

reactions:
  all-complete:
    auto: true
    action: notify

projects:
  myapp:
    repo: org/myapp
    path: ~/code/myapp
    reactions:
      all-complete:
        auto: false   # suppress the "all sessions done" notification for this project

  otherproj:
    repo: org/otherproj
    path: ~/code/otherproj
    # inherits global defaults — all-complete notification fires as normal

Per-project reaction blocks are merged with the global config; the project value wins for every field that is specified.

Recipe: Stuck session threshold

Extend the agent-stuck threshold for projects with long-running builds where 10m of inactivity is normal:

reactions:
  agent-stuck:
    threshold: "30m"

The threshold field is used exclusively by agent-stuck. A session must be continuously idle for longer than threshold before the reaction fires and the session status transitions to stuck.

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