fix(ci): drain the merge queue oldest-first, not newest-first - #128
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`gh pr list` returns newest-first, and the sweep merges the first eligible PR then stops. So the newest green PR wins every sweep, and an older one can wait indefinitely. Observed in maonakamoto/fleetcrown on 2026-08-06: two consecutive sweeps merged the two newest PRs while three older green ones sat untouched and were never even evaluated. With several agent sessions opening PRs continuously that is starvation — and it starves the worst candidate, since the longest-waiting PR is the one whose checks were proven against the most now-stale base. PR numbers increase monotonically with creation, so sorting ascending is FIFO. The ordering was never a decision, just whatever gh happened to return. Fixed upstream first (fleetcrown #182) and verified in production there: the sweep immediately after it landed correctly took the oldest open PR rather than the newest. This is that one-line change, applied to the fleet. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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gh pr listreturns newest-first, and the sweep merges the first eligible PR then stops. So the newest green PR wins every sweep, and an older one can wait indefinitely.Observed in
maonakamoto/fleetcrownon 2026-08-06: two consecutive sweeps merged the two newest PRs while three older green ones sat untouched and were never even evaluated. With several agent sessions opening PRs continuously that is starvation — and it starves the worst candidate, since the longest-waiting PR is the one whose checks were proven against the most now-stale base.PR numbers increase monotonically with creation, so sorting ascending is FIFO. The ordering was never a decision — just whatever
ghhappened to return.Fixed upstream first (fleetcrown #182) and verified in production there: the sweep immediately after it landed correctly took the oldest open PR rather than the newest. This is that same one-line change applied across the fleet. Nothing else changes — same eligibility rules, same one-merge-per-sweep pacing, same green-base guard.
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