---
name: "Auto-assign should respect agent stage when front matter specifies agent"
---

# Story 279: Auto-assign should respect agent stage when front matter specifies agent

## User Story

As a project operator, I want auto-assign to respect the pipeline stage when a story's front matter specifies a preferred agent, so that a coder agent isn't assigned to do QA work just because the story originally requested that coder.

## Acceptance Criteria

- [ ] When a story in `3_qa/` has `agent: coder-opus` in front matter, auto-assign skips the preferred agent (stage mismatch) and assigns a free QA-stage agent instead
- [ ] When a story in `2_current/` has `agent: coder-opus` in front matter, auto-assign still respects the preference (stage matches)
- [ ] When the preferred agent's stage mismatches, auto-assign logs a message indicating the stage mismatch and fallback

## Out of Scope

- Changing the front matter `agent` field automatically when a story advances stages
- Adding per-stage agent preferences to front matter
