Release Agent

The Release Agent automates the journey from pull request to production. It evaluates QA results, requests approval in Slack, merges PRs, monitors deployments, and handles rollbacks when things go wrong.

What You Get

• One-command merges — approve and merge PRs from Slack
• Automated QA gates — PRs are held until QA agents give the all-clear
• Deploy monitoring — watches CI/CD after merge and confirms the deploy is live
• Automatic rollback — creates a revert PR if a deployment fails
• PR lifecycle tracking — every PR moves through a clear state machine

Slash Commands

Type /release in Slack followed by a subcommand:

Command	What It Does
/release status	View the release queue (default if no subcommand)
/release merge <pr> [skip-qa]	Approve and merge a PR (QA must pass first)
/release block <pr> [reason]	Block a PR from being merged
/release unblock <pr>	Unblock a previously blocked PR
/release rollback	Roll back the latest deployment
/release help	Show the command reference

Examples

/release status
/release merge 142
/release merge 142 skip-qa
/release block 142 Waiting for design review
/release unblock 142

PR State Machine

Every tracked PR moves through these states:

State	Meaning
Open	PR just opened or updated
QA Pending	Waiting for Tech and UX QA agents to review
Blocked (P1)	QA found critical issues — merge blocked until fixed
Awaiting Approval	QA passed — waiting for someone to /release merge
Approved	Human approved — merge happens on the next tick
Deploying	Merged and squashed — monitoring the CI deploy
Deployed	Deploy succeeded and health check passed
User Blocked	Manually blocked via /release block
Deploy Failed	CI or health check failed — revert PR created

Slack Notifications

The agent posts updates to the releases channel as PRs move through the pipeline:

• New PR opened — summary with approve/reject buttons
• QA complete — results with any findings listed
• Merged — confirmation with deploy monitoring status
• Deployed — success confirmation with health check result
• Failed — alert with revert PR link

Interactive buttons let you approve or reject directly from the Slack message.

Automated Checks

Every 30 minutes, the agent:

1. Checks for new or updated PRs
2. Evaluates QA agent comments
3. Advances PR state where possible
4. Monitors in-flight deployments
5. Flags stale PRs that need attention

Data Sources

The agent pulls data from:

• GitHub — PR status, QA comments, CI workflow runs, merge operations
• Nucleus — health check endpoint to verify deploys
• Slack — slash commands and interactive button callbacks