Manager Agent — Observing Your Team

Welcome to the Manager Agent section of gh-helm! Here you’ll learn how gh-helm automates monitoring your team’s activity and maps their work to performance pillars, so you can focus on coaching—not paperwork.

What the Manager Agent Does

The Manager Agent is your digital counterpart, tracking progress across the whole team and turning daily activity into actionable insights. It observes team members as they complete work, automatically categorizing their contributions using your defined performance pillars. These pillars make it easy to see who’s excelling, who’s stuck, and what to focus on in 1-1s.

High-level capabilities:

Monitors repos and projects
Maps work (issues, PRs, commits) to performance pillars
Tracks activity for team members
Prepares 1-1 notes
Summarizes trends and stats

Key Commands

gh-helm empowers managers with these agent-specific commands:

Observe

gh helm manager observe

Monitors all configured repos, labels, and team members. Records activity for each pillar.

Example output:

🕵️  Observing activity for team: docs-team
- alice: 4 PRs merged, 2 issues resolved (Delivery, Collaboration)
- bob: 3 reviews, 1 new doc section (Collaboration, Documentation)
Pillar mapping complete. See `gh helm manager stats` for details.

Prepare 1-1s

gh helm manager prep

Compiles recent activity and flags discussion topics for upcoming 1-1s.

Example output:

📝 Preparing 1-1 prep for: alice
- Notable: Drove 'docs/project-agent.md' overhaul (Delivery)
- Opportunity: Missed deadline on 'docs/configuration.md' (Ownership)
- Coaching: Requested help on technical review (Collaboration)
Prep ready for manager-agent review.

Pulse

gh helm manager pulse

Summarizes team trends and highlights significant shifts.

Example output:

📈 Weekly Pulse:
- Team delivery up 15%
- Documentation pillar lagging
- More cross-team reviews (Collaboration +)

Report

gh helm manager report

Generates a full report on team activity mapped to pillars, for any time period.

Example output:

💡 Manager Agent Report
June 1–7, 2024
Delivery: 12 PRs merged, 6 features shipped
Collaboration: 18 reviews, 3 co-authored docs
Ownership: 2 blockers resolved
Documentation: 4 new tutorial pages

Stats

gh helm manager stats

Displays pillar breakdown for each team member.

Example output:

🏆 Team Pillar Stats
alice: Delivery 8, Collaboration 5, Ownership 2, Documentation 3
bob: Delivery 3, Collaboration 7, Ownership 1, Documentation 5

Pillar Mapping: How It Works

The Manager Agent categorizes work using your performance pillars. It’s powered by a mapping system:

Mapping Layers (in order):

Labels (e.g., delivery, documentation)
Repositories (specific repos for certain pillars)
File Paths (files or directories linked to pillars)
Keywords (in issue titles, PR descriptions)

When the agent sees activity, it checks for known labels, repo matches, file paths, or relevant keywords, assigning each piece of work to the right pillar in your helm-manager.toml config.

Configuration — helm-manager.toml

Pillar mapping and agent rules live in your helm-manager.toml file. Example snippet:

[pillars]
delivery      = ["docs/*", "feature", "bugfix"]
documentation = ["docs/*.md", "tutorial"]
collaboration = ["review", "pairing"]
ownership     = ["blocker", "urgent"]

[team]
alice = "alice-gh"
bob   = "bob-gh"

1-1 Prep and Observations

The Manager Agent helps you lead effective 1-1s:

Prepares individualized notes before each meeting
Flags highlights, opportunities, and coaching moments
Observes recent activity, trends, and pillar progress

Typical Workflow:

Run gh helm manager observe to capture the latest
Run gh helm manager prep for personalized 1-1 notes
Use the output to guide your conversation, celebrate wins, and identify growth areas

Next: Configuration Reference for details on customizing your manager agent.