🪝 GitHub Issues

Moving an issue in the octo repo to the next stage of the issue lifecycle (by adding a label on GitHub) starts the coding agent on that stage: writing a plan, implementing an approved plan, or reworking a pull request. Nothing starts until the owner adds one of these labels, and the owner always merges.

The coding agent is Octo’s coding specialist; it also works with the owner in the #coding channel on Discord.

How an event gets here

  1. GitHub sends the issue event to https://<funnel-host>/hooksproxy/github-issues through Tailscale Funnel, signed with an HMAC-SHA256 signature (X-Hub-Signature-256).
  2. The Webhook Proxy checks the signature, drops events from senders other than the owner’s accounts and events that aren’t one of the lifecycle labels, and forwards the rest to the Gateway’s /hooks/github-issues endpoint with OpenClaw’s hooks token added.
  3. A transform on the Gateway checks the sender and label again, logs what it kept or dropped, and passes on only labeled events for the labels below.
  4. OpenClaw starts a turn for the coding agent in a session for that issue and label, and delivers the agent’s reply to the owner.

Labels that start work

Label Added by What the agent does
ilc:approved Owner Writes an implementation plan and posts it on the issue
ilc:plan-approved Owner Hands the approved plan to Claude Code (the claude agent, over ACP), which implements it; the change then goes up as a pull request for the owner to review
ilc:pr-needs-work Owner Goes back to implementation to address the review

The full set of ilc: labels and the state machine are on the Issue Lifecycle page.

At a glance