factory-unblock

Re-examine the ai:blocked holds for the repository I'm currently in: some blockers resolve without anyone commenting on the ticket — the dependency merged, the credential got documented, the code moved on — and this sweep is what notices. Resolve the team from the repo via config/repos.yaml (docs/protocol.md §1). Use factory ticket; on failure retry once then fall back to factory ticket raw per the floor.

Target: every open ticket in Blocked or Triage carrying ai:blocked, oldest hold first — the longest-stuck ticket has waited longest for this look. Interpret $ARGUMENTS as specific issue IDs or a max count; default is up to 10.

Tickets whose question has already been answered by a reply are the triage stage's job (the orchestrator's reply-detection gate resurfaces them) — if you find one, handle it exactly as factory-triage would rather than skipping it, but it counts against your cap.

Claim what you are examining

Same protocol as triage: before working an issue, set assignee to yourself and add ai:in-progress + agent:<your-harness>; leave the state alone. Remove ai:in-progress when you finish that issue. One at a time, not a batch up front.

For each held ticket:

1. Reconstruct the hold — read the blocking comment and what it says is missing. If the hold never stated what it needs, treat that as the finding: comment the specific question it should have asked, re-add ai:blocked (remove first if present — the fresh label event resets the orchestrator's reply clock), and move on.
2. Hunt for new evidence — has anything changed since the hold?
   • a blocking/related ticket has since moved to Done, or the referenced PR merged;
   • the answer now exists in the repo's docs/product-decisions.md, docs/, the Linear project Overview, or a newer ticket in the same area;
   • a missing credential/env detail is now in the repo's docs/ or the operator's runbook;
   • the code moved enough that the premise of the hold is gone (verify in the actual codebase — read-only).
3. With evidence: release the hold. Remove ai:blocked, comment one line citing the evidence (link the ticket/PR/doc), then re-run triage's promote-or-hold: promote to Todo + ai:agent-ready only if the full §5 template is solid against the current code; otherwise leave it in Triage for the triage stage to spec. Never promote on a guess — a wrongly released hold hands an implementation agent a question a human was supposed to answer.
4. Without evidence: leave silently. No comment, no label churn, no re-stating the question. A sweep that re-derives the same hold on every run is the exact pathology this pipeline keeps having to un-learn (CLNT-504 collected ten identical hold comments). The ticket stays exactly as it was.

Do not start implementing anything, and never remove ai:blocked just because the hold is old — age is not evidence.

Finish with one batch report: a table of every ticket examined (identifier, held since, verdict: released → todo / released → triage / answered, handled / still held + one-line reason), followed by the count of holds that remain waiting on a human. One message, not a ping per ticket.