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Nautelle

Using Nautelle

Shipping

Draft PRs, CI fix rounds, auto-merge, cleanup and handoff notes.

A Board card ships itself. The worker commits, the runner pushes and opens the pull request while the work is under way, Nautelle watches CI and fixes red checks, and the card merges when it is done and green. You stay in charge of what merges.

A card page: the running round, its draft PR, CI fix rounds and token-saver savings.A card page: the running round, its draft PR, CI fix rounds and token-saver savings.
A card page: the running round, its draft PR and CI fix rounds.

What happens to a card

  1. Run

    The card gets its own worktree and an interactive Claude session. Enabled coding rules and the approved design are in the worker prompt. Every card gets a spec file in its first commit, and a bug also gets a GitHub issue.

  2. Draft PR

    The worker never pushes. The runner pushes the card's commits and opens a draft pull request during the round, so you can follow it from the card.

  3. Finish

    The worker calls finish_card. The pull request leaves draft with a description the worker wrote: a spec link, what changed and why, and the acceptance checklist. The card moves to Finished.

  4. CI

    Nautelle watches the checks. A red check, or a conflict with the base, starts an automatic fix round in the same session, at most three per pull request. After that the card waits for you. A head that never reports any checks is retriggered once, then handed to you.

  5. Merge

    When the card is done and green, it merges if auto-merge is on for the project. It is on by default for a non-default base and off for the default branch.

Auto-merge or Accept

With auto-merge off, or when a card needs a person, you decide. Accept can merge the pull request, bound to the head commit you saw, or accept without merging. Either can delete the branch. Auto-merge refuses a round that pushed no new commit or ended within seconds, and leaves the card in Finished with a reason.

A merged card stays on the Board. Feedback opens a new round on a fresh branch and a new pull request. Only you move it to Completed, which closes the worker and cleans up its worktree.

Handoff notes

Every card has a short handoff note: goal, done, next, decisions, dead ends, files, how to verify. The agent keeps it current, and the next round starts from it when that is cheaper than resuming the whole session. It lives in the card's worktree. A project that ships session content also keeps a copy on the server, and an operator can edit it. The card face shows resumed from handoff or resumed session.

When it stops

A card that needs you shows why: CI never reported, three fix rounds used, a failed merge, or a description the worker did not finish. A stuck session is handled by Steward.

Next steps

StewardStuck work, caught early.Token SaverCheaper rounds.