Ready to go from a plain repo to a workflow that changes code, verifies it, and merges it — on its own?
AI coding demos look magical, but most stop at the pull request — and leave you wondering how to actually trust one at scale. The moment you point an agent at real repos, the questions pile up: how do you know it didn't break something? What stops a retry loop from running forever? When do you pull in a human? And who actually clicks merge? This workshop is the part the demos skip. You'll take a real repo and build the missing machinery: verification first, then an agent that does the work, proves it, and closes the loop by merging the safe changes itself.
The core lesson: an agent can only automate what it can verify — and the loop isn't real until it merges.
What you'll build:
- A repo made agent-ready — real tests, CI, and a baseline check
- Your own skill, from scratch, that makes a code change and proves it didn't break anything
- A verification gate that lets the agent fix only what its change broke — no false positives
- A bounded execution loop that retries, then hands off to a human instead of hiding failures
- An auto-merge step that closes the loop — merging the change on green, with no human in the seat
Topics covered:
- Splitting a task into a deterministic lane (scripts, zero model cost) and a non-deterministic lane (real judgment)
- Writing tests and wiring CI so the agent has eyesight into the repo
- Capturing a baseline and chasing only the NEW failures your change introduced
- Authoring an agentic skill from scratch: what it reads, what it does, what it writes back
- Putting the loop on a leash — bounded retries, stable-green checks, routing failures to a human
- Closing the loop with auto-merge — gate on green, merge the safe changes, escalate the rest
- Designing the skill so it composes into a larger fleet later — one reliable unit first, scale second
This isn't a demo — it's a build. You'll write TypeScript, add real tests, and wire up a workflow that runs end to end: change, verify, and merge, on its own. By the end you'll have a working skill and the confidence to point it at your own codebase on Monday morning.
This workshop has been presented at JSNation US 2026, check out the latest edition of this JavaScript Conference.
