ak watch dry-run

ak watch dry-run

Preview what ak watch start would post without actually posting

Synopsis

What it does: Poll a GitHub repository for matching issues and simulate the full agent response pipeline - including rate-limit accounting - without posting any comment to GitHub. Reports how many issues would be responded to, skipped (already responded), or blocked by the rate ceiling.

Who it's for: Both: power devs validating filter configurations before enabling a live watch and non-technical users previewing automation impact.

When to use it: Before running ak watch start for the first time on a repo, to verify the label/author/keyword filters match the right issues and the rate limit is correctly configured. Safe to run anytime - nothing is posted.

Examples: ak watch dry-run owner/repo # preview all matched issues ak watch dry-run owner/repo --label bug # dry-run with label filter ak watch dry-run owner/repo --max-per-hour 5 # preview with rate ceiling ak watch dry-run owner/repo --json # machine-readable summary

What changes on disk: Read-only. No comments are posted to GitHub; no state file is updated.

Output modes: pretty default on TTY (colors, ASCII markers) plain auto when stdout piped or --no-interactive json --json (single-object envelope, NDJSON-safe)

Exit codes: 0 success 1 runtime error 2 invalid flags 3 user-cancel (SIGINT, prompt-cancel)

ak watch dry-run <owner/repo> [flags]

Options

      --agent string       Agent skill to run for each matched issue (default "engineer/scout")
      --author strings     Filter to issues by these GitHub logins
  -h, --help               help for dry-run
      --json               Emit machine-readable JSON (implies --no-interactive)
      --keyword strings    Filter to issues containing any of these keywords
      --kits-dir string    Override kits directory
      --label strings      Filter to issues with any of these labels
      --max-per-hour int   Rate limit ceiling (preview only) (default 10)
      --no-interactive     Disable interactive prompts (CI-safe)
  -q, --quiet              Suppress non-error output on stderr
  -V, --verbose            Extra diagnostic output on stderr (loses to --quiet)
  -y, --yes                Assume yes for all prompts

SEE ALSO

• ak watch - Watch a GitHub repository and auto-respond to issues