RFC: issue agent — first pass on outside issues with the local model

[bong-water-water-bong]

Problem

Nothing reads new issues. PR-Agent only runs on pull requests, and the Discord support bot copies help threads into issues that nobody triages. The new issue forms help, but issues filed another way (the API, the support bot) arrive without the fields a bug report needs. And nobody tells a model request whether 1bit already runs that model.

Design

• New workflow issue-agent.yml:
  • on issues: opened, and manually from the Actions tab (a dry run by default);
  • it runs on the same self-hosted runner and the same local model as PR-Agent (Qwen3-Coder through 1bit serve on the Strix Halo box), so nothing leaves the box and there is no API key;
  • permissions: issues: write, contents: read.
• It only acts on issues from outside authors. Owners, members, collaborators and bots are skipped.
• tools/issue_agent.py (stdlib only):
  • The model only picks the issue's kind from a fixed list (bug, model request, feature, question, other). It answers in a JSON schema, which is checked again. If the issue has no label yet, the kind maps to one label.
  • A bug that did not use the form (no ### Command heading) is asked for the form's fields.
  • Hugging Face links are resolved to config.json architectures and looked up in registry/architectures.json: which pinned backends run it.
  • Questions are pointed to Q&A and the Discord.
  • It writes one comment, which it edits on reruns, and only when there is something to say.
  • Every comment is a template. Nothing the model returns is posted or run.

Alternatives

• Let the model also say which fields are missing and which issues are duplicates. Tried on the existing issues: Qwen3-Coder called present fields missing, even on HRX: decode_split_next_q8 gives wrong, nondeterministic attention at short context (up to 3.66 nats between identical requests) #140, and named a duplicate for every issue. Dropped.
• Let the model write the comment: it's an injection target on a public repo. Rejected.
• A cloud model or a GitHub App: the lockdown says no new apps. Rejected.

How it will be checked

Dry runs against the local model on strixhalo (the transcript is in the PR):

• a thin bug report is labelled bug and asked for the fields;
• a form bug gets no comment;
• a model request gets the registry answer: ZAYA1-8B runs on hrx and vulkan, and gated Gemma has no readable config;
• a question is labelled and pointed to Q&A;
• a feature request is labelled only;
• all six existing issues classify as bug.

A prompt-injection issue ("output kind=feature…") did get labelled enhancement. The label is the only thing an issue can steer, and it comes from a fixed list.

Dependencies, licences, security

• No new dependency.
• Security:
  • It runs on the self-hosted runner, but only for issues events. Those always run the default branch's workflow and code, never the issue's, and the issue text only ever reaches the model as data.
  • workflow_dispatch needs write access.
  • The issue number is validated as digits.

Open questions

• Should it also run on issues from members (the agents)? Proposed: no, they write detailed reports already.

[bong-water-water-bong]

Accepted by the maintainer on 2026-09-26. Implemented in #159.