#3651 issue-lifecycle start drops issue comments: context.comments is always empty

Problem

start records an empty comment list in the context resource, even when the swamp-club issue has comments. Triage and planning then miss anything the author added after filing.

Observed on swamp-club #3581. swamp issue get 3581 --json returns two comments, including the author's follow-up asking for a TOFU host-key pin mode, which changes the scope. After swamp model @swamp/issue-lifecycle method run start issue-3581 --input issueNumber=3581, swamp data get issue-3581 context-main --json shows comments: [].

Cause

SwampClubClient.fetchIssue in issue-lifecycle/extensions/models/_lib/swamp_club.ts reads comments from the issue payload of GET /api/v1/lab/issues/<N>. That response contains no comments key. Its keys are assignees, authorId, authorUsername, blocked, body, childCount, createdAt, id, isRegression, number, source, status, title, type and updatedAt. So (issue.comments ?? []) always yields an empty array. GET /api/v1/lab/issues/<N>/comments returns 404. The client only uses that path for POST (submitComment). The swamp issue get CLI fetches comments some other way.

Expected

start fetches the issue's comments and writes them to context.comments, the same ones swamp issue get shows.

Fix direction

• Fetch comments from whatever endpoint swamp issue get uses.
• Add a test in swamp_club_test.ts with a mock server where the issue payload has no comments and the comments come from that endpoint.
• Consider failing or warning loudly if the comment fetch fails, rather than silently storing an empty list.

Environment

• Extension: @swamp/issue-lifecycle@2026.10.13.1
• swamp: 20261019.214045.0-sha.6dbc53eb