From GitHub

After reading this page you can start a bee from a comment on any GitHub issue or PR, and carry on a conversation with it in that same thread. No human writes code. A human always reviews.

Summon a bee with a mention

Comment on the issue or PR and @mention the bee:

@cube-bees the login form 500s when the email contains a plus sign. Investigate and fix.

The mention is @cube-bees (case-insensitive; @bee also works) and must stand alone at the start of the comment or after a space. Only newly created comments count. Editing an existing comment to add the mention does nothing.

The bee works on the repo the comment sits on; you don't name a repo. Its reply (the PR link, a "no change needed" verdict, or a failure) comes back as a comment in the same conversation.

One thing the trigger does not pass to the bee: a recipe. GitHub comments can't name one, and the router doesn't guess: the run goes to the general-purpose swarm agent. To choose a recipe explicitly, use Slack or the dashboard.

What your comment does

Swarm checks four cases in order; the first match wins.

1. You already have a conversation going on that issue or PR. Your comment continues it, no mention needed. See Continue the conversation.
2. You mention the bee on a PR that a bee created. The run that created the PR resumes, reads your comment, and updates the same PR on the same branch. This works for any teammate, not just the person who started the run, so a reviewer can steer the bee's PR from the PR itself.
3. You mention the bee on any other PR. A fresh run starts that already knows which PR it's on: it receives the PR's number, branch, and description, reads the discussion and the diff before acting, and pushes its changes to the PR's branch. You don't need to name the branch in your comment.
4. You mention the bee on a plain issue. A fresh run starts from your comment text, and the bee opens a new PR for the fix.

Inline review comments work too. Mention the bee on a specific line of the diff and it also receives the file and line, so it lands directly on the code you're discussing.

Continue the conversation

Once a bee is running (or has finished), a plain follow-up comment from you on the same issue or PR continues the same conversation, with no mention needed. This is how you answer a clarifying question, approve a plan, or ask for a tweak after the bee's PR lands. A later comment reopens the conversation even after the run settled.

Continuation is scoped to the requester: someone else's plain comment won't steer your bee. The one exception is a PR the bee created, where any teammate's explicit mention resumes the run that owns it (case 2 above). Anywhere else, another person's mention starts their own separate run.

What gets ignored

• Comments with no mention when you have no open conversation on that issue or PR. Ordinary review discussion on a bee's PR never wakes it; only an explicit mention does.
• Edited or deleted comments (only newly created comments fire).
• The bee's own comments (loop guard on the bot username, so it can't talk to itself or re-trigger off its own replies).

GitHub vs Slack

Use GitHub when the context already lives on an issue or PR: review feedback, a bug filed as an issue, a follow-up on a PR a bee opened. The whole exchange stays in the code's audit trail.

Use Slack for new work not tied to an existing issue or PR, when you need to point the bee at a specific repo, or when you want to pick a recipe.

If the run doesn't show as yours on the dashboard

GitHub webhooks rarely include your email, so Swarm maps your GitHub login to your 3SC email via operator config (GITHUB_LOGIN_EMAIL_MAP). If your login isn't mapped, the run is owned by the bare login and won't appear under your runs on the dashboard. Ask an operator to add the mapping.