post-retro.sh fails when ready-for-triage label doesn't exist in target repo

[ralphbean]

What happens

post-retro.sh passes --label "ready-for-triage" to gh issue create, which fails with could not add label: 'ready-for-triage' not found if the label hasn't been pre-provisioned in the target repo. This causes the entire retro workflow to fail with exit code 1 even though the agent completed successfully.

Observed in https://github.com/fullsend-ai/.fullsend/actions/runs/28469348936/job/84377689680 — retro on PR #2795 targeting fullsend-ai/fullsend.

What should happen

The retro workflow should succeed. Either the label should be created automatically before use, or the post-script should handle a missing label gracefully (create it, or proceed without it and log a warning).

Context

The ready-for-triage label was introduced in c04131b (PR #2679) to enable bot-to-bot dispatch handoffs after ADR 0054 blocked bot actors on issues.opened events. The label exists in the scaffold template (internal/scaffold/fullsend-repo/) so newly provisioned repos get it, but existing repos were not updated.

Related issues:

• repo-maintenance should create required labels for enabled agent harnesses #278 — repo-maintenance should create required labels for enabled agent harnesses (the general problem)
• Retro post-script should handle repos with GitHub Issues disabled gracefully #2729 — post-retro should handle repos with GitHub Issues disabled (same class of post-script fragility)

[fullsend-ai-triage]

🤖 Finished Triage · ✅ Success · Started 7:34 PM UTC · Completed 7:37 PM UTC
Commit: f1117dd · View workflow run →

[fullsend-ai-triage]

Triage Summary

Severity: Medium · Category: Bug

Problem

post-retro.sh assumes the ready-for-triage label exists in the target repo when filing proposal issues via gh issue create --label "ready-for-triage". The label is provisioned by the scaffold template for new repos, but existing repos that predate PR #2679 don't have it, causing the entire retro workflow to fail.

Root Cause

The gh issue create command returns a non-zero exit code when a specified label doesn't exist. Unlike post-review.sh — which proactively creates missing labels (e.g., ready-for-merge) via gh label create before applying them — post-retro.sh has no such guard.

Recommended Fix

Add a gh label create call before the gh issue create invocation in post-retro.sh, following the existing pattern in post-review.sh. Something like:

gh label create "ready-for-triage" --description "Retro-filed issue awaiting triage agent" --force --repo "$TARGET_REPO" 2>/dev/null || true

The --force flag makes gh label create idempotent (no error if the label already exists).

Proposed Test Case

# In post-retro-test.sh:
# 1. Set up a mock repo without the ready-for-triage label
# 2. Run post-retro.sh with valid agent output containing proposals
# 3. Assert: label is created in the target repo
# 4. Assert: proposal issue is filed successfully with the label applied
# 5. Assert: re-running on a repo that already has the label does not error

Related Issues

• repo-maintenance should create required labels for enabled agent harnesses #278 — the general problem of provisioning required labels for existing repos via repo-maintenance
• Retro post-script should handle repos with GitHub Issues disabled gracefully #2729 — same class of post-script fragility (post-retro handling repos with Issues disabled)

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Labels: Bug in the retro agent's post-script affecting dispatch label provisioning, medium priority since it blocks retro workflows on existing repos.

[fullsend-ai-coder]

🤖 Finished Code · ✅ Success · Started 7:40 PM UTC · Completed 7:45 PM UTC
Commit: f1117dd · View workflow run →