Escalation: create the needs-human label if missing, fail loudly otherwise

[robercano-ghbot]

Problem

On 2026-07-16 the attempt-budget escalation (#95) posted its comment on issue #97 claiming it had labeled needs-human — but the label didn't exist in the repo and the labeling silently no-op'd (created by hand afterward). Every consumer repo (reDeploy, reDeFi) still lacks the label, so their escalations will silently no-op the same way.

Do

In the escalation path: create the label if absent (via bot-gh.sh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/labels — the pinned gh 2.4.0 has no gh label command), and if labeling still fails, surface it loudly (ledger annotation + notify) instead of pretending success. General principle for all escalation plumbing: its own failure must never be silent.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[robercano-ghbot]

Resolved — already fully implemented by #169 (PR #171, merged 2026-07-21).

I independently verified this on current origin/main (read the actual files + ran the test suite green), not just from the issue summary. Every requirement of this issue is now satisfied by the shared escalation seam .claude/scripts/needs-human.sh:

• Create the label if absent, via REST (not gh label) — needs_human_flag() idempotently creates needs-human repo-wide on every call via gh api -X POST repos/{owner}/{repo}/labels (needs-human.sh:161-164), exactly as this issue asked; the pinned gh 2.4.0 has no gh label subcommand.
• Don't trust the labeling silently — after the per-target add (needs-human.sh:176-177) it re-reads the target's labels to CONFIRM the label actually stuck (needs-human.sh:179-180), rather than trusting gh 2.4.0's exit code.
• If labeling still fails, surface it loudly instead of pretending success — on an unconfirmed add it does NOT post the escalation comment (fails closed) and instead annotates the ledger via log-event.sh → events.jsonl with phase=error (needs-human.sh:197-203), then still calls notify.sh unconditionally. Silent no-op is gone.
• General principle (all escalation plumbing) — every escalation call site that applies needs-human routes through this one seam: loop-tick.sh, merge-ready.sh, pr-feedback.sh, pr-rebase.sh (line 202), pr-comment-fix.sh (line 216). None does its own labeling. (pr-ci-fix.sh only reads the label as a guard skip; release.sh's own REST label creates are for feedback/from:* and already use the same needs-human: every label write silently no-ops (gh 2.4.0) — episode guard never arms, one PR comment per tick (99 spam comments on PR #168) #169 idempotent pattern.)

Test evidence: .claude/scripts/needs-human.test.sh passes 29/29. Scenario 1 asserts the REST label-create call sequence; scenario 9 asserts the unconfirmed path attempts the add, posts NO comment, and writes a loud phase=error line to events.jsonl — precisely this issue's failure mode.

Note for consumer repos (reDeploy, reDeFi): they inherit this seam on their next harness sync, which self-heals the missing-label no-op described here on first escalation.

Closing as subsumed by #169. No separate code change needed.