Trigger agents with @lazybox mentions

lazybox can watch for @lazybox mentions in your GitHub issues and auto-spawn an agent on the corresponding workspace when one lands — so you (or an allowed teammate) can kick off work by leaving a comment, without touching the TUI.

The same works from a lazybox: label: tag one issue or a whole eligible backlog, in a single repo or across many, and lazybox starts an agent on each. See Start many at once, across repos.

Labels have a different authorization boundary from mentions. GitHub does not include who applied a label in the issue data lazybox polls, so mention.allowed_logins applies only to @lazybox mentions. lazybox limits label triggers to issues you authored or are assigned to, but anyone with permission to label an eligible issue can trigger the agent.

How it works

When the full GitHub sweep finds @lazybox in an issue body or an issue comment (pull requests are not scanned), lazybox opens that issue’s workspace worktree and spawns an agent with a prompt to implement the issue. By default, only mentions written by the authenticated viewer (you) trigger a spawn — so a stranger commenting @lazybox on your public issue can’t start an agent on your machine.

A bare @lazybox starts Claude Code. To choose a registered agent and an optional model-tier alias, put them after the mention on the same line:

@lazybox claude S
@lazybox codex

The first example starts Claude at its built-in S (Haiku) tier; the second starts Codex at its configured default tier. Unknown agent ids fall back to Claude, and an unknown model alias falls back to that agent’s default.

Let the issue choose the tier

You can choose the compute profile without putting a model alias in the @lazybox directive. Add a high, medium, or low GitHub label, or put the matching @high, @medium, or @low marker in the issue body:

@high
@lazybox codex

When the next full GitHub sweep finds the trigger, lazybox opens the issue workspace and maps high through Codex’s configured agents.codex.models.priority table. The selected tier’s arguments can set both the concrete model and its reasoning effort. This is an end-to-end GitHub handoff: the issue declares the task and compute profile, and the mention starts it without opening the TUI.

An explicit model alias in the directive, such as @lazybox codex S, overrides the issue priority. Priority labels take precedence over body markers; when several labels or markers are present, the strongest one wins.

See Run an agent per workspace → Let GitHub choose the model and effort for the full tier configuration and the w S / w M / w L in-TUI overrides.

Trigger from a label

For an issue you authored or are assigned to, a lazybox:<agent>[/<model-alias>] label provides the same one-shot trigger:

lazybox:claude/S
lazybox:codex

Pull requests and issues where you are only mentioned or requested as a reviewer are ignored. The first matching label is handled once and persisted, so leaving it on the issue does not restart the agent on every sweep.

Start many at once, across repos

Because the trigger is just a GitHub label, you can start work in bulk. Tag a batch of issues — from the GitHub UI, a saved search, or gh — with a lazybox: label, in one repository or across several, and the next full GitHub sweep opens a workspace and spawns an agent for each eligible issue you authored or are assigned to. An eligible, triaged backlog becomes a running fleet without opening the TUI or a terminal:

set -eu

label='lazybox:claude/M'
for repo in owner/app owner/api owner/worker; do
  # Preserve an existing label's color and description; create only if absent.
  labels=$(gh api --paginate "repos/$repo/labels?per_page=100" --jq '.[].name')
  if ! printf '%s\n' "$labels" | grep -Fxq "$label"; then
    gh label create "$label" --repo "$repo" --color 8250DF
  fi

  # Label every open "ready" issue; lazybox starts eligible ones.
  issues=$(
    gh api --paginate "repos/$repo/issues?state=open&labels=ready&per_page=100" \
      --jq '.[] | select(has("pull_request") | not) | .number'
  )
  if [ -n "$issues" ]; then
    printf '%s\n' "$issues" |
      while read -r issue; do
        gh issue edit "$issue" --repo "$repo" --add-label "$label"
      done
  fi
done

The paginated API calls cover every matching issue rather than stopping at a fixed result limit. Existing label metadata is left untouched. Each label trigger is handled once and persisted, so re-running the loop or leaving the labels in place never respawns an agent that is already working. Every eligible issue gets its own isolated worktree, so the agents run side by side without colliding.

Allow other people to trigger mentions

To let specific collaborators trigger agents with @lazybox mentions, list their GitHub logins under mention.allowed_logins in ~/.lazybox/config.yaml:

mention:
  allowed_logins:
    - alice
    - bob

The list is authoritative:

• Empty (or absent) — only the authenticated viewer (you) triggers spawns.
• Non-empty — exactly the listed logins trigger spawns. The viewer is not added automatically, so include your own login if you want your mentions to keep working alongside your collaborators’.

Notes

• Mention and label triggers are scanned by the full GitHub sweep, not by the hot or notifications-driven incremental polls. Under normal polling, the full sweep runs at daemon startup and roughly every ten minutes by default, so a new trigger can wait about ten minutes before it starts.
• The spawned agent runs with the same tools and repository access as any other lazybox agent — see the security boundaries. Only add logins you trust to run an agent against your checkout, and only give trusted people permission to apply labels in repositories containing eligible issues.

See also

• Run an agent per workspace — what an agent does once it’s spawned in a worktree.
• Configuration reference → mention — the full schema.