Merge overrides

How to land a pull request when the merge queue or required CI status check is the wrong tool for a rare, time-sensitive change.

The organization owner for this mechanism is burin-labs/.github. Read that README section for the full contract. This page is the Harn-facing how-to.

Prerequisites

You are an organization owner/admin on burin-labs, or a repository admin on burin-labs/harn.
The pull request head lives in burin-labs/harn (not a fork).
You can fix forward on main if the land is wrong.

Labels

bypass-ci: cancel competing runs for the head SHA and publish a successful CI status check. Does not merge.
bypass-merge-queue: squash-merge immediately when CI status is already green. Skips the merge queue.
force-merge: publish successful CI status, then squash-merge immediately. Skips CI proof and the merge queue.

Labels are only a trigger. The reusable workflow re-checks that the actor is an organization or repository admin and refuses fork pull requests. Privileged merges use the harn-release-bot installation token, which is a ruleset bypass actor.

When to use an override

The merge queue is backed up enough that speculative CI would burn material Actions spend, and one PR must land before the rest.
Required CI is broken in a way you can fix forward on main in the same session.
You need to serialize a single founder land ahead of a long queue (release unblock or production incident).

When not to use an override

Ordinary feature work, dependency bumps, or “CI is slow today.”
Changes you cannot fix forward if they break main.
Pull requests from forks.

Steps

Open or identify the same-repo pull request.
Add exactly one override label.
Read the audit comment posted by Merge override dispatch.
For force-merge or bypass-merge-queue, confirm the PR merged.
Prefer removing the label after the land; the audit comment remains.

Organization admins can also use GitHub’s “Bypass rules and merge” UI. The org-wide main protection ruleset grants OrganizationAdmin bypass in pull_request mode.

Org contract and wiring template: burin-labs/.github README
Harn agent notes: AGENTS.md → “Merge overrides”