Pipeline allows stories to move through coding → QA → merge → done without any actual code changes landing on master. The squash-merge produces an empty diff but the pipeline still marks the story as done. Affected stories: 247, 273, 274, 278, 279, 280, 92. Only 266, 271, 277, and 281 actually shipped code. Root cause: no check that the merge commit contains a non-empty diff. Filed bug 283 for the manual_qa gate issue specifically, but the empty-merge-to-done problem is broader and needs its own fix.
Multiple agents have committed directly to master instead of their worktree/feature branch:
- Commit `5f4591f` ("fix: update should_commit_stage test to match 5_done") — likely mergemaster
- Commit `a32cfbd` ("Add bot-level command registry with help command") — story 285 coder committed code + Cargo.lock directly to master
Agents should only commit to their feature branch or merge-queue branch, never to master directly. Suspect agents are running `git commit` in the project root instead of the worktree directory. This can also revert uncommitted fixes on master (e.g. project.toml pkill fix was overwritten). Frequency: at least 2 confirmed cases. This is a recurring and serious problem — needs a guard in the server or agent prompts.
