This PR addresses systemic visibility gaps and backlog growth by uncapping metric reporting and accelerating the issue lifecycle.
### Key Changes
1. **Metric Uncapping**: Refactored `bottlenecks.ts` and `priority_distribution.ts` to use GraphQL Search `totalCount`. This bypasses the previous 1000-issue cap, providing accurate visibility into the true scale of the 2062-issue backlog and 540+ zombie issues.
2. **Lifecycle Acceleration**: Lowered `STALE_DAYS` to 30 and `CLOSE_DAYS`/`NO_RESPONSE_DAYS` to 7 in `gemini-lifecycle-manager.cjs`. This move is necessary to clear the aging backlog and address the spike in zombie issues (issues inactive for >30d).
3. **CI Cost Optimization**: Restricted the Mac CI matrix to Node 20.x for all events. Since Linux runners already provide coverage for Node 22.x and 24.x, this change significantly reduces spend on expensive Mac runners without compromising quality.
### Impact
- **Accuracy**: Metrics now reflect the full repository state rather than a 1000-item sample.
- **Productivity**: Faster issue rotation will help maintainers focus on active community needs.
- **Efficiency**: Estimated ~30% reduction in Actions spend by optimizing the Mac test matrix.
- Mandate the use of `gh run view` for empirical log verification rather than static code inspection.
- Update interactive mode prompt to allow the agent to retain task context and run the unblocking protocol when following up on its own PRs.
This update resolves the bot's persistent focus on already-completed tasks:
- Moves and syncs lessons-learned.md to tools/gemini-cli-bot/ to ensure persistent memory.
- Marks metrics fixes, prompt hardenings, and user rejection signals as DONE in the ledger.
- Implements the CI matrix optimization (Node 20.x for PRs) the bot was re-attempting.
- This forces the bot to rotate to a new domain in the next run by satisfying its current goals.
This update hardens the bot's reasoning and validation layers to stop thrashing and ensure technical quality:
- Mandates local validation (lint, build, test) in Brain and Critique prompts.
- Uncaps bottleneck metrics (zombie issues, priority distribution) to 1000 items.
- Enhances PR awareness to handle multiple bot identities and exclude release PRs.
- Formally defines closed (unmerged) PRs as explicit user rejection signals.
- Strengthens domain rotation and anti-pigeonholing enforcement.
Fixes the throughput metrics script and introduces new visibility into backlog bottlenecks and priority distribution.
### Changes
- **Throughput Fixes**: Resolved a `ReferenceError` where `isMaintainer` was not correctly scoped, fixed a malformed license header, and added a new metric for `issue_arrival_rate_per_day` to enable growth-vs-closure analysis.
- **Backlog Bottlenecks**: Introduced `bottlenecks.ts` to identify "Zombie" issues (no activity > 30 days) and "Hot" issues (high activity).
- **Priority Distribution**: Introduced `priority_distribution.ts` to track the count of open issues by priority level (P0-P3).
### Impact
These metrics will provide the necessary data to confirm if the repository is experiencing systemic backlog growth (Arrival Rate > Throughput) and help identify which segments of the backlog require urgent triage.
