GitHub lifecycle recovery incorrectly depends on the intake label

[willwashburn]

Problem

GitHub-native Factory overloads safety.requireLabel (for example, factory-ready) as both:

1. the intake signal for new work, and
2. a precondition for operating on work already in factory:in-progress.

That makes a normal human action — removing factory-ready to mean “do not pick this up as new work” — silently strand existing state. The live repro is AgentWorkforce/hoopsheet#32, which has remained factory:in-progress without factory-ready for 11 days.

Evidence and the initial two-site finding come from head-of-experiments’ hoopsheet/factory survey. They also tested the obvious ownership-scoping objection: requireLabel is not what scopes a Factory instance to repositories. Repo routing is handled separately through repos.names / repos.byLabel (#repoLabelForGithubIssue and its githubIssueMirrorsSkippedUnroutable path). Separating intake from lifecycle state does not weaken repository ownership.

Code sweep

An exhaustive rg sweep of requireLabel across src/ found the following GitHub lifecycle sites in src/orchestrator/factory.ts that incorrectly depend on the intake label after work is already in progress:

• runOnce() builds mayRecoverGithubOrphan only when both the required intake label and factory:in-progress are present (around 1738).
• #reconcileOrphanedGithubInProgress() repeats the same precondition (around 1907).
• #isGithubIssueResumable() repeats it again (around 4050), so the issue is unresumable as well as unreconcilable.
• #clarificationIssueStillActive() treats an in-progress issue as inactive when the intake label was removed (around 12668), cancelling durable clarification wake.
• #githubIssuePathsFromIndex() only enumerates open issues carrying the intake label (around 4519). On the current indexed fast path, an orphan like Live factory start should always run startup backfill after subscribing #32 can disappear before the reconciler sees it at all.

Other requireLabel uses are legitimate intake/scope checks (#isIssueReady, live change ingestion, dispatch safety, routing-label exclusion) and should remain intake-driven.

Expected behavior

• New-work discovery and dispatch should continue to require safety.requireLabel.
• Lifecycle recovery, resume, clarification wake, and discovery of already-owned lifecycle state should key on factory:in-progress (plus terminal/closed and active-owner guards), not on the intake label.
• The indexed discovery path must include nonterminal Factory lifecycle labels needed for reconciliation, even when the intake label is absent.
• Removing the intake label must not erase or disable cleanup of existing Factory state.

Fix direction

Introduce distinct predicates for:

• intake eligible: open + configured required label + not terminal/in-progress as appropriate;
• Factory lifecycle active/recoverable: open + factory:in-progress + not factory:human-review, with the existing durable-owner/roster safety checks.

Use the lifecycle predicate consistently in orphan discovery, reconciliation, resume, and clarification wake. Add regression coverage for an open factory:in-progress issue without factory-ready, including the _index.json fast path.