[clubanderson]

Why

Owner decision (@clubanderson, 2026-10-27): "If items are adopted, then the hive agents own it and they should be eligible for auto merge."

Contributor PRs the hive adopted in place (stage/074-adopted-by-hive, e.g. #14440 / #14456 / #14457) could never auto-merge: review and stage treated them as hive-owned, but all three merge tiers still gated on the original author's trust (untrusted-author-role, not-app-authored, contributor-lane:claim-tier-untrusted). Because no lane ever admitted them, the 074 → 095/097 transition-table edges never fired and the PRs needed a human /lgtm forever.

What

• Contributor lane gains an adoption admission path (checked before registry/marker): if the stage store records a live in-place adoption whose AdoptedHead equals the head under evaluation, the PR is admitted under the hive's own authority with reason contributor-lane:adopted-by-hive. Author tier / claim marker / author_association are not consulted for that head.
• Everything else is unchanged: CI green on the adopted head, reviewer verdict, DCO, workflow-path / tests-removed fences, reporter-trust hold, changes-requested, release hold, soak, human-merge paths, head re-verification before merge.
• Safety: superseding adoptions are not admitted on the original PR (the hive/adopt-<n> App PR merges via the self-authored lane); a contributor push over the adopted head yields (074 → 072, existing behaviour) and the normal contributor gates apply again.
• Config: governor.labels.stage.adoption.auto_merge (default on) on the existing adoption block.
• Merge comment names the adopted head and label for audit.

Tests

Table-driven TestTrySweepContributorLanePRAdoptedByHiveAdmission (adopted head merges without trust; NONE association merges; workflow / test-removal fences hold; red CI holds; contributor pushed over head → back to author gates; yielded; supersede not admitted; no record; toggle off; valid claim still merges) plus helper tests and the config getter default. No time.Sleep.

Not in scope

#14457's check-failing:overlayfs-exec-guard is a cancelled run (treated red, correctly), not stale state — noted on the issue as a separate gap.

Fixes #14488

[kubestellar-prow]

[APPROVALNOTIFIER] This PR is NOT APPROVED

This pull-request has been approved by:
Once this PR has been reviewed and has the lgtm label, please assign clubanderson for approval. For more information see the Code Review Process.

The full list of commands accepted by this bot can be found here.

Details

Needs approval from an approver in each of these files:

• OWNERS

Approvers can indicate their approval by writing /approve in a comment
Approvers can cancel approval by writing /approve cancel in a comment

[hivecommons-hive]

@clubanderson is auto-promoted for contributor-lane merging on this PR: the last 5 merged PRs by this author in this repository have no revert or sentinel-alert evidence. CI, reviewer verdict, diff fences, soak, holds and branch protection still apply.

[github-actions]

Open PR overlap check

Base branch: v5

Conflicts are checked with every PR merged onto the current tip of v5, so a PR that only needs a rebase is not reported as conflicting with its siblings.

PR	Title	Relation	Files
#14474	🐛 fix(automerge): close the adopted PR when its superseder merges from any stage	same files	src/pkg/github/automerge/automerge_stage_labels.go

[hivecommons-hive]

@clubanderson this PR is held at stage/071-needs-author and the hive will not merge it yet.

Failing checks:

• test (dashboard shuffle 1/3)
• test (rest 1/4)
• test (rest 2/4)

Next: the hive does not push to your branch. Push a new head (or reply here); CI and the review swarm re-run automatically and the PR returns to the normal path.

[github-actions]

Thank you for your contribution! Your PR has been merged.

We'd love to hear how your experience was: share feedback

[hivecommons-hive]

Evidence bundle `#1448953d8a68` sha256:65a3772527b883d489dc656f0d78a7b77eff6b6979297c5d799e56e1986ff7d2 — download from the dashboard or `hivectl review evidence #14489`.

[hivecommons-hive]

merged by Hive trusted-author auto-merge: author @clubanderson holds role owner and GitHub permission admin on repo; CI green at 53d8a68.