`dispatch <number>` can't resolve GitHub issues: resolver reads one page of listTree; issueSource auto-detect silently picks Linear

[khaliqgant]

Summary

factory dispatch <number> cannot resolve a GitHub issue in any workspace with a non-trivial mount, because the resolver lists /github/repos once and filters a single page. mount.listTree is paginated; on a real workspace the first page never reaches the target repo, so it throws found 0 matches for an issue that is demonstrably in the mount.

This forces every user to pass the full mount path instead of the issue number.

Repro (factory 0.1.17, 2026-07-16)

$ cat factory.config.json
{ "issueSource": "github",
  "repos": { "org": "AgentWorkforce", "names": ["hoopsheet"],
             "cloneRoot": "/Users/…/AgentWorkforce", "default": "AgentWorkforce/hoopsheet" }, … }

$ factory dispatch 11 --dry-run
Unable to resolve GitHub issue 11: found 0 matches

# but the issue IS in the mount:
$ relayfile ls /github/repos/AgentWorkforce__hoopsheet/issues/by-id/ | grep '/11.json'
file /github/repos/AgentWorkforce__hoopsheet/issues/by-id/11.json  provider=github  size=836  rev=rev_1245477

# and the full path resolves fine:
$ factory dispatch /github/repos/AgentWorkforce__hoopsheet/issues/by-id/11.json --dry-run
{ "issue": { "uuid": "AgentWorkforce/hoopsheet#11", "key": "11", … },
  "agents": [ { "name": "ar-11-impl-hoopsheet", "role": "implementer" },
              { "name": "ar-11-review", "role": "reviewer" } ], "dryRun": true }

Root cause

findIssuePath (src/cli/fleet.ts:722):

const matches = (await mount.listTree('/github/repos'))
  .filter((path) => path.endsWith('.json'))
  .filter((path) => { const parts = githubIssuePathParts(path); … })
if (matches.length === 0) throw new Error(`Unable to resolve GitHub issue ${key}: found 0 matches`)

listTree is paginated — it returns a page plus a cursor, and the call site consumes neither. Observed on this workspace:

$ relayfile ls /github/repos
Tree /github/repos
dir  /github/repos/AgentWorkforce  rev=dir
next cursor: /github/repos/AgentWorkforce/agents/issues/36__fix-pr-reviewer-…/comments/4616124226.json

The tree spans every repo, issue and comment in the workspace, so page 1 is still inside another repo's comment threads. hoopsheet/issues/by-id/11.json is never in the filtered set.

Note the Linear branch a few lines below lists the far narrower /linear/issues/ — which is why this only bites GitHub.

Fix

• Paginate listTree to exhaustion (or until a match is found), or
• Construct the path directly — with issueSource: 'github' and repos.default (or a single repos.names entry) the path is deterministic: /github/repos/{owner}__{repo}/issues/by-id/{number}.json. Read it and fall back to a scan only if absent. This is O(1) instead of walking the entire workspace tree, and is strictly better for the common single-repo case.
• Either way, scope the listing to /github/repos/{owner}__{repo}/issues/by-id/ rather than the whole /github/repos tree.

Also worth checking: the mount appears to contain two path shapes — /github/repos/AgentWorkforce__hoopsheet/issues/by-id/11.json (owner__repo) and /github/repos/AgentWorkforce/agents/issues/36__… (owner/repo). Confirm githubIssuePathParts handles both deliberately, and that githubIssuePathPreference is ordering them the way you intend.

Also: issueSource auto-detect silently picks Linear for GitHub repos

Related and worth fixing together. issueSource is .optional() with no default (src/config/schema.ts:151), and auto-detect (src/cli/fleet.ts:629) does:

const linearReady = await mount.ensureSubRoot('/linear/issues', { timeoutMs: 90_000 })
if (linearReady !== 'ready') { config.issueSource = 'github' } else { config.issueSource = 'linear' }

So in a workspace with both Linear and GitHub connected — which is the normal case here — a GitHub-only factory config silently resolves as Linear. factory dispatch 37 then searches /linear/issues/ for a key 37 and reports the generic Unable to resolve issue 37: found 0 matches, which gives no hint that it looked in the wrong system entirely. It also pays a 90s ensureSubRoot probe to get there.

Suggestions:

• Infer from config before probing the mount: if repos.org/repos.default is set and no Linear-specific config exists, prefer github.
• Make the error name the source it searched: "Unable to resolve issue 37 in Linear (issueSource=linear, auto-detected); set issueSource: 'github' if these are GitHub issues." The current message is the same string for both branches minus one word, which is what made this take a while to spot.

Impact

Every GitHub user must pass /github/repos/{org}__{repo}/issues/by-id/{n}.json instead of 11. factory-e2e-demo/run.sh already constructs that path by hand (ISSUE_PATH_ROOT="/github/repos/${ORG}__${REPO}/issues/by-id"), which is the tell — the demo works around this rather than using the ergonomic form the CLI advertises (dispatch <KEY|path>).

Related: #78 (config ergonomics — tilde expansion + cwd default). Same theme: the minimum viable local invocation is harder than it needs to be.