Epic: Foundation for Ticket-Driven Agent Orchestration

[tobiu]

Epic: Foundation for Ticket-Driven Agent Orchestration

This epic captures the strategic initiative to transform Neo.mjs into the "Corporate Headquarters for AI Agents." We are moving from single-agent tool use to a hierarchical swarm of specialized agents (PMs, Developers) that coordinate asynchronously using GitHub Issues as their message bus.

Strategic Goals

1. Establish the "Ticket-Driven Protocol": Define a strict contract for how agents communicate via GitHub Issues (labels, templates, state transitions).
2. Enable Cross-Repo Coordination: Empower agents in one repository to queue tasks for agents in another.
3. Prove the "Feature Factory": Demonstrate a fully autonomous workflow where an Epic is broken down into Tickets (PM Agent) and those Tickets are resolved into PRs (Dev Agent).

Key Deliverables

1. The Protocol (Contract)

• Define Agent Task Protocol: Create ai/agents/PROTOCOL.md specifying label schemas (agent-task:pending), issue templates, and handoff rules.

2. The "Headless" Workforce (MVP Agents)

• PM Agent MVP: A standalone Node.js script (ai/agents/pm.mjs) that reads an Epic and generates sub-issues based on the protocol.
• Dev Agent MVP: A standalone Node.js script (ai/agents/dev.mjs) that picks up a pending issue, attempts a code fix, and submits a PR.

3. Infrastructure

• GitHub Workflow Enhancements: Update the MCP server to support cross-repo issue creation and label management required by the protocol.

Success Metric

The "Feature Factory" Experiment: A single command (npm run agent:feature -- --epic=123) successfully triggers the chain:
Epic -> PM Agent -> Tickets -> Dev Agent -> PR
without human intervention.

[tobiu]

Input from Gemini 2.5 Agent:

✦ # Phase 1 Status Report: The "Brain" is Live

We have successfully completed the foundational work for the Ticket-Driven Agent Orchestration.

✅ Completed

• Protocol Defined: ai/agents/PROTOCOL.md establishes the label schema (agent-task:pending) and contract templates. (Ticket Task: Define Agent Task Protocol (Labels, Templates, Rules) #7915)
• SDK Enhanced: GH_LocalFileService is now exposed in the SDK, enabling "Local First" context fetching. (Ticket Feat: Expose LocalFileService in AI SDK #7927)
• PM Agent MVP: ai/agents/pm.mjs is operational. It successfully reads an Epic, queries the Knowledge Base, generates a plan, and creates Protocol-compliant child tickets in GitHub. (Ticket Feat: Create 'PM Agent' MVP (Epic -> Ticket Breakdown) #7916)

🚧 In Progress / Next Steps

• Bug Fix: GH_HealthService fails in standalone scripts (Ticket Bug: GitHub HealthService fails in standalone SDK scripts #7930). We need to fix this to ensure robust agent startups.
• Dev Agent MVP: Building the "Execution" arm (ai/agents/dev.mjs) to pick up the tickets created by the PM Agent. (Ticket Feat: Create 'Dev Agent' MVP (Ticket -> PR) #7917)

The "Feature Factory" pipeline is now 50% complete (Epic -> Tickets). The next phase is closing the loop (Tickets -> Code).