Tasks were getting stuck in `in-review` forever when auto-merge could not
resolve conflicts within MAX_AUTO_MERGE_RETRIES. The conflict-exhaustion
branch silently cleared `status` (no error, no log entry, no comment),
and the 30-min cooldown sweep would reset retries and re-attempt the
same impossible merge — looping silently with no user-facing surface.
Why:
- FN-2918 and FN-2903 both spent hours in this loop with no error/comment
visible on the task. The only log evidence was repeated
"Auto-merge retry cooldown elapsed (30m idle)" entries with no
follow-up outcome.
How to apply:
- Every merge failure now writes a `<Manual|Auto>-merge failed: <msg>`
entry to the task log so the dashboard surfaces the reason.
- Conflict-retry exhaustion now bounces the task back to `in-progress`
with a comment + log entry so the executor re-rebases against main
and retries — mirroring the verification-failure-bounce pattern.
- New `mergeConflictBounceCount` task field caps outer bounces
(`MAX_MERGE_CONFLICT_BOUNCES = 2`); past the cap, the task is parked
in `in-review` with `status="failed"` and a follow-up triage task is
created so a human can resolve the conflict manually.
- Non-conflict and non-direct-strategy errors now also set
`status="failed"` so the cooldown sweep can't re-pick them up.
- `canMergeTask` skips tasks with `status="failed"` so terminal
failures (verification cap, bounce cap, non-conflict error) are no
longer eligible for cooldown re-attempts.
Schema migration v52 adds the `mergeConflictBounceCount` column.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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