Context Awareness (Layer 5)

Layer 5 makes the agent shell work-aware — it passively tracks the issues, PRs, CI status, and review threads relevant to your current conversation.

How It Works

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Issues: #51 #52  |  PR: #50  |  CI: ✅  |  Reviews: 2 unresolved │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  *agent-shell*<cherries-epic>                               │
│                                                             │
│  Let's work on the migration wizard (#52). The PR (#50)     │
│  is passing CI now. There are 2 unresolved review threads.  │
│                                                             │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

The header-line at the top of every agent-shell buffer shows a live summary of tracked context.

Auto-Detection

The context panel scans buffer text for references:

Pattern	Detected As	Example
`#123`	GitHub issue/PR (current repo)	`#51`
`org/repo#123`	GitHub issue/PR (specific repo)	`ldeck/decknix#52`
`PROJ-1234`	Jira ticket	`ALR-4268`, `NC-7801`

False positives are filtered: HTTP-200, SHA-256, UTF-8, ISO-8601 are excluded.

Data Fetching

For each detected GitHub reference, the panel fetches metadata via gh CLI:

Issues/PRs: number, title, state (open/closed/merged), URL, type (issue vs PR)
CI: latest run status for the current branch (pass/fail/running)
Reviews: unresolved review thread count across open PRs in context

CI status auto-polls every 60 seconds.

Header-Line Indicators

Indicator	Meaning
`Issues: #51 #52`	Tracked issues (green = open, grey = closed)
`PR: #50`	Tracked PRs (green = open, purple = merged, red = closed)
`CI: ✅`	Latest CI run passed
`CI: ❌`	Latest CI run failed
`CI: 🔄`	CI run in progress
`Reviews: 2 unresolved`	Unresolved PR review threads (yellow warning)

Context Panel (`C-c I`)

The full detail panel shows everything in a formatted buffer:

Agent Context Panel
────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Issues
────────────────────────────────────────
  #51          Cherries epic — high-appeal features    open
  #52          Migration wizard                        open 📌

Pull Requests
────────────────────────────────────────
  🟢 #50       Agent shell context awareness           open

Branch & CI
────────────────────────────────────────
  Branch: feature/context-panel  (ldeck/decknix)
  CI:     ✅ success  CI / Build and Test

Reviews
────────────────────────────────────────
  4 threads, 2 unresolved

────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Press q to close.  C-c i g to open item in browser.

Pin / Unpin

Manually pin items to keep them in context even if they're not mentioned in the conversation:

Key	Action
`C-c i a`	Pin an issue/PR (e.g., `#49`, `NC-1234`, `org/repo#12`)
`C-c i d`	Unpin — remove from tracked context

Pinned items are marked with 📌 in the detail panel.

Key	Action
`C-c i i`	List tracked issues (completing-read → open in browser)
`C-c i p`	List tracked PRs
`C-c i c`	Refresh and show CI status
`C-c i r`	Refresh and show review thread count
`C-c i g`	Open any tracked item in external browser
`C-c i f`	Visit in magit-forge

Persistence

Pinned context items are saved per-session in ~/.config/decknix/agent-sessions.json (the same file used for tags). When you resume a session, pinned items are restored and metadata is re-fetched.

Nix Options

programs.emacs.decknix.agentShell.context.enable = true;

Requires gh CLI on $PATH (included in decknix default packages).

Decknix Documentation