Merge-coordinator: 24/7 arming that never bypasses your checks
Jul 5 trimmdev: workers/agents open PRs; a GitHub Actions coordinator arms, serializes risky lanes, revalidates stale heads, re-arms when GitHub drops auto-merge — and cannot merge past required checks.
Source: merge-coordinator — 24/7 GitHub Actions PR landing
trimmdev/merge-coordinator (Jul 5; still shipping) is the landing half of an always-on factory: workers (people or coding agents) open PRs; the coordinator owns merging them. It runs on GitHub Actions with your machine off — arms every eligible PR so GitHub merges on green, keeps path-globs you flag in a serial lane (one at a time), revalidates stale heads against current base before arming, re-arms the instant GitHub silently disables auto-merge, and can open a revert PR when a configured post-merge workflow fails.
The hard rule is what it will not do: push to base, merge past required checks/branch protection, arm two serial-lane PRs at once, arm forks by default, or arm branches reserved for another sign-off system. A hold label / draft is the human brake. Fine-grained tokens that cannot read check-runs use checkWorkflow conclusions instead of statusCheckRollup so “green” still means your CI, not a missing permission. Inspired by jremick/agent-merge-batch-protocol’s “workers don’t merge; one coordinator owns the write path,” but implemented as lane-aware arming rather than batch retest of everything.
Why it matters for code review
Merge-rate under sustained agent load is where continuous factories die: green PRs stall, stale heads sneak in, auto-merge flakes leave overnight work on the tarmac. A 24/7 coordinator that only arms — and never bypasses the gate — is harnessed throughput after the verify tax is paid. Pair it with independent review gates upstream; the FOMO worth acting on is a morning queue of armed, revalidated PRs waiting for green, not a burst session that merges by hand while the rest of the fleet idles.