Slash Commands
Slash commands are comments posted on GitHub issues to control the Colony pipeline. The Mayor watches every issue comment and dispatches the appropriate action when it recognises a command.
Default prefix: colony — commands take the form /colony:<command>. The prefix is configurable via commands.root in colony.config.yaml.
Command reference
Section titled “Command reference”| Command | Syntax | Effect | Valid states |
|---|---|---|---|
| retry | /colony:retry [small|medium|large] | Re-queue the issue for its current pipeline stage. The optional size argument (small, medium, or large) overrides the complexity tier stored in the pipeline — useful when the analyzer under-estimated scope. | Any non-terminal state |
| skip-planning | /colony:skip-planning | Skip the planning step and proceed directly to implementation. Also clears failure-blocked and dependency-blocked states by re-enqueueing the current state’s executor. | Any non-terminal state |
| decompose | /colony:decompose | Route the issue to the planner agent for epic decomposition into subtasks. | Any state |
| cancel | /colony:cancel | Cancel the issue and close it, abandoning any in-progress work. Closes any open PR associated with the issue. | Any non-terminal state |
| pause | /colony:pause | Pause pipeline processing for this issue. The issue remains open and preserves all state; no Worker will pick it up until it is resumed. | Any non-terminal, non-paused state |
| resume | /colony:resume | Resume a paused issue, returning it to the state it was in before the pause. | paused |
| reimplement | /colony:reimplement | Discard the current implementation and PR, and start fresh from analysis. Posts guidance from your comment to the Worker for the next attempt. | Any state |
| state | /colony:state <target-state> | Force a manual state transition to <target-state>. The transition is validated against the workflow graph — invalid targets are rejected with an explanation. | Any state |
| priority | /colony:priority <high|normal|low> | Set the manual scheduling priority for this issue. High-priority issues are picked up before normal, normal before low, within the same Worker pool. | Any state |
| review | /colony:review | Re-trigger deterministic checks and LLM review. Also works on external (human-authored) PRs to request a Colony review. | human-review-ready, merge-pending, ready-for-dev |
| feedback | /colony:feedback | Send operator feedback to the implementation. Converts any open PR to draft and requests changes; the body of your comment is forwarded to the developer Worker as guidance for the next attempt. | human-review-ready, in-review, merge-pending, ready-for-dev, changes-requested, needs-clarification, failure-blocked |
| reanalyze | /colony:reanalyze | Re-run issue analysis from scratch. Re-queues the analyzer on the current issue, discarding the previous analysis result. | Any state |
| reopen | /colony:reopen | Reopen a completed (done) issue and send it back to intake (new). Requires a workflow that declares the reopen action — the default colony-default workflow does; a custom workflow may not, in which case Colony posts guidance to open a fresh issue with /colony:enqueue. | done |
| track | /colony:track | Manage self-improvement track assignment. Limited support — see the Colony Cloud dashboard for full track management. | Any state |
| enqueue | /colony:enqueue [high|normal|low] | Add an untracked issue (one that doesn’t yet have a colony:* label) to the Colony pipeline. The optional priority argument sets the initial scheduling priority. | unlabeled (no existing pipeline state) |
| help | /colony:help | Post a comment listing all available operator slash commands with their syntax and descriptions. | Any state |
retry size override
Section titled “retry size override”/colony:retry [small|medium|large] accepts an optional complexity size. When provided, it overrides the tier stored in the pipeline store for this issue — Colony will allocate model capacity and time budget as if the issue had been analyzed at that tier. Omit the argument to retry at the existing complexity tier.
review on external PRs
Section titled “review on external PRs”/colony:review works on GitHub issues that have a PR opened by a human (not Colony). Posting the command asks Colony to run its standard reviewer agent against that PR — the same deterministic checks and LLM review it applies to its own PRs.
feedback vs reimplement
Section titled “feedback vs reimplement”/colony:feedback— use when the implementation direction is correct but the current attempt needs specific changes. Colony forwards your comment text to the Worker; the PR is marked draft and re-queued for changes./colony:reimplement— use when the approach is fundamentally wrong and you want Colony to start over. The current PR is closed and Colony begins fresh from analysis.
reopen and custom workflows
Section titled “reopen and custom workflows”/colony:reopen is fully supported when the active workflow declares the reopen operator action. The bundled colony-default workflow declares reopen: from: [done] to: new, so it works out of the box for standard deployments.
If you are using a custom workflow that does not declare the reopen action, Colony will post a comment explaining that reopen is unavailable for your workflow. In that case, open a new GitHub issue describing the same work and apply the colony:enqueue label (or post /colony:enqueue on the new issue) to seed it into the pipeline.