Arc Forge Labs Docs v2026.10.53
Flow

Low-risk merge lane

A pull request that is a small fix, with no merge risk, merges itself when its checks are green. All other pull requests wait for a maintainer. A release always waits for a maintainer (docs/RELEASING.md).

Workflow: .github/workflows/low-risk-merge.yml. Rules: scripts/github/low-risk-merge.mjs. Tests: test/low-risk-merge.test.js.

The words are ClawSweeper's and Barnacle's

The lane makes no new labels. It uses the labels that OpenClaw's bots use:

Label From Meaning here
merge-risk: 🚨 <kind> ClawSweeper (src/clawsweeper-policy.ts) The pull request touches a risky surface. It waits for a maintainer.
status: 🚀 automerge armed ClawSweeper The pull request is in the lane.
size: XS to size: XL Barnacle's labeler Lines changed, without docs/ and lockfiles.

When ClawSweeper reviews a pull request and adds a merge-risk: label, or a person adds one, the lane holds the pull request. The lane never removes a merge-risk: label. To let a held pull request into the lane, a maintainer removes the label after reading the change.

In the lane

All of these must be true:

  1. A maintainer (owner, member or collaborator) opened it, from a branch of this repository (not a fork), against main. A Docs Agent pull request (docs/AI_BOTS.md) counts too: a bot opened it from docs-agent/refresh and it changes only docs/** and README.md.
  2. The title type is fix, improve, docs or test. feat is a new feature; refactor and chore are not fixes.
  3. The size is XS, S or M (under 500 lines).
  4. No file carries a merge risk (below), and no merge-risk: label is on it.
  5. It is not a draft.
  6. Every check on its head commit is done and none failed, and test and gitleaks passed.

Then the workflow merges it (squash) at that exact head commit. If the head moves, GitHub refuses the merge and the lane decides again on the next event.

Flow's surfaces and their merge risk

Test files (test/, *.test.js) never carry a risk.

Merge risk Flow surface
compatibility Schema and migrations (server/db/, any migrations/, schema.js, tables.js), imports, dependencies, packaging, deploy, Replit
message-delivery How Flow writes to Xero and Seazona: server/integrations/xero/, server/integrations/seazona/, the adapter port, sending, outbox, queue, pipeline, ledger, links
availability Call guards, health, rate limits, the server start
auth-provider server/auth/, the Xero connection (OAuth, connections, webhooks)
security-boundary Secrets, SECURITY.md, Gitleaks settings
automation .github/, .agents/, .claude/, release and GitHub scripts, the changelog, AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md (Barnacle's triage: risky-infra surface)
other VISION.md, LICENSE

A change to the lane itself is automation, so it always waits for a maintainer.

What a pull request shows

The workflow keeps one comment on the pull request up to date. It says whether the pull request is armed or held, and why. It edits the comment in place, so nobody gets a new notification.

Events

The lane decides again when a pull request opens, gets a push, changes its title, leaves draft, or gets or loses a label, and when CI or Secret Scan finishes on it. workflow_dispatch with a pull request number decides again by hand.

Trust

The workflow runs on pull_request_target and workflow_run. It checks out only scripts/github/ from the default branch and reads the pull request through the API. It never checks out or runs pull request code.

Settings

  • Repository variable FLOW_LOW_RISK_MERGE=off stops the merge. The labels and the comment stay.
  • The ruleset (.github/rulesets/main.json) needs no change: the lane merges through a pull request with the required checks green, as a person does.
  • Optional: with the Barnacle App installed on this repository (BARNACLE_APP_ID, BARNACLE_APP_PRIVATE_KEY), the App makes the merge, so CI and Secret Scan run on the merge commit on main. With the workflow's own token, GitHub starts no workflow for that push.
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