i18n pipeline: open PR backlog exceeds limit (15 open, max 5)

[openlibrary-bot]

What happened

While running the translation agent for batch ["te"], pre-flight checked the number of open i18n PRs and found 15 open PRs with i18n/ branch prefixes — all created today (2026-07-16) from parallel batch runs:

• i18n: AI translations — uk (2026-07-16) #41 i18n/ai-uk-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — ar (2026-07-16) #40 i18n/ai-ar-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — Romanian (ro) (2026-07-16) #39 i18n/ai-ro-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — id (2026-07-16) #38 i18n/ai-id-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — bn (2026-07-16) #37 i18n/ai-bn-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — pl (2026-07-16) #36 i18n/ai-pl-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — ko (2026-07-16) #35 i18n/ai-ko-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — de (2026-07-16) #34 i18n/ai-de-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — French (fr) (2026-07-16) #33 i18n/ai-fr-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — cs (2026-07-16) #32 i18n/ai-cs-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — Hindi (hi) (2026-07-16) #31 i18n/ai-hi-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — Spanish (es) (2026-07-16) #30 i18n/ai-es-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — tl (2026-07-16) #29 i18n/ai-tl-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — hr (2026-07-16) #28 i18n/ai-hr-20260716
• i18n: AI translations — Italian (it) (2026-07-16) #27 i18n/ai-it-20260716

Per the agent instructions, the max is 5 open i18n PRs before new work should stop and a backlog issue be filed.

Command that failed

Not a failure — this is the documented stop condition:

gh pr list --state open --json headRefName --jq '[.[] | select(.headRefName | startswith("i18n/"))] | length'
# => 15

Impact

Batch ["te"] (Telugu, 80 untranslated strings pending) was not processed. No branch or PR was created for this run.

Suggested fix

• Merge or close some of the existing open i18n PRs to bring the count back under the limit (likely they're waiting on CI/auto-merge or manual review).
• Consider whether the 5-PR limit is still appropriate given multiple languages are now processed in parallel batches — many of these PRs may be legitimately queued rather than stuck.
• Once the backlog clears, re-run the te batch.

[openlibrary-bot]

Also blocked: batch ["zh"] (80 untranslated strings pending) hit the same 15-open-PR backlog on 2026-07-16. No branch or PR created for zh. Same suggested fix applies — clear/merge backlog, then re-run.

[openlibrary-bot]

Batch ["as"] (2026-07-16) also stopped here: 80 untranslated strings pending for as, but open i18n PR count was 14 (≥ 5 limit) at check time. No new branch/PR opened for this batch per instructions. Will need to be picked up once the backlog clears.