🔍 Agentic Workflow Audit Report - 2025-10-21

[github-actions[bot]]

Audit Summary

• Period: Last 24 hours (2025-10-20 to 2025-10-21)
• Runs Analyzed: 37 workflow runs
• Workflows Sampled: 10 runs analyzed in detail
• Success Rate: 70% (7 successes, 3 failures from sampled runs)
• Issues Found: 3 workflow failures, multiple false positive error detections

Key Findings

1. Workflow Failures

Tidy Workflow (2 failures)

• Run 18668883871: Detection job failed
• Run 18668594417: Detection job failed
• Status: Both runs completed agent work successfully, but failed during detection phase
• Impact: Medium - workflow completes main work but fails on security validation

Changeset Generator (1 failure)

• Run 18668188470: Push to pull request branch failed
• Status: Agent completed successfully, created changeset, but failed to push
• Impact: Medium - changeset created but not committed to PR

Dev Workflow (1 failure)

• Run 18668075006: Agent job failed after 20.6 minutes (timeout)
• Status: Workflow timed out during agent execution
• Impact: High - complete workflow failure

2. Error Detection False Positives

Issue: The error validation logs contain extensive false positives. Many "error" detections are from:

• JavaScript/TypeScript code containing the word "error" (e.g., catch (error), is_error, hasErrors)
• Error validation script itself (validate_errors.cjs)
• Normal error handling code patterns

Examples from logs:

} catch (error) {
  const errorMessage = error instanceof Error ? error.message : String(error);
  core.error(errorMessage);
}

These are legitimate code patterns, not actual runtime errors. The current error detection regex patterns are too broad.

Recommendation: Refine error detection patterns to exclude:

• Code blocks containing error handling patterns
• Lines from validate_errors.cjs script itself
• JavaScript/TypeScript source code analysis

3. Permission Warnings

Pattern Detected: Multiple workflows showing "Permission denied and could not request permission from user" warnings in:

• Dev workflow (run 18668628184, 18668075006)
• Dev Hawk workflow (run 18668409331)
• Tidy workflow (run 18668594417, 18668223049)

Status: Appears to be related to GitHub MCP tool usage when attempting certain operations without explicit permission.

Impact: Low - workflows continue despite warnings, but indicates potential permission configuration issue

4. Missing Tools Analysis

Result: ✅ No missing tools detected across all 37 workflow runs analyzed.

All tool requests were successfully fulfilled. This indicates good tool configuration coverage.

5. MCP Server Failures

Result: ✅ No MCP server failures detected in the analyzed runs.

All MCP servers (GitHub, gh-aw, safe-outputs) operated successfully throughout the audit period.

Performance Metrics

Token Usage and Cost (Claude-based workflows)

• Average Token Usage: ~240k tokens per run
• Average Cost: ~$0.23 per run
• Cost Range: $0.05 to $0.31 per workflow
• Highest Cost: Changeset Generator - $0.31 (run 18668188470, 313k tokens)

Efficiency Metrics

• Average Turns: 19-23 turns per workflow
• Average Duration: 1-5 minutes (excluding timeouts)
• Longest Successful Run: 4.9 minutes (Tidy workflow)
• Timeout Case: 21.2 minutes (Dev workflow failure)

Affected Workflows

Workflow	Status	Issues	Success Rate
Tidy	⚠️ Mixed	Detection job failures (2)	33% (1/3)
Changeset Generator	⚠️ Mixed	Push failure (1)	75% (3/4)
Dev	⚠️ Mixed	Timeout failure (1)	67% (2/3)
Dev Hawk	✅ Success	Permission warnings only	100% (1/1)

Recommendations

Priority 1: Fix False Positive Error Detection

The error validation system is generating excessive false positives by detecting code patterns as errors. This creates noise and reduces the value of actual error detection.

Action: Update error detection patterns in validate_errors.cjs to:

1. Skip lines from validation script itself
2. Exclude common JavaScript error handling patterns
3. Focus on actual runtime error messages from logs

Priority 2: Investigate Detection Job Failures

The Tidy workflow's detection job is failing consistently (2 out of 3 runs).

Action:

1. Review detection.log files for Tidy workflow failures
2. Check if security threat detection is encountering specific patterns that cause failures
3. Add error handling to detection phase

Priority 3: Debug Push Failures

Changeset Generator occasionally fails to push to pull request branches.

Action:

1. Review git push error messages in failed runs
2. Check for branch protection rules or permission issues
3. Add retry logic for transient git push failures

Priority 4: Address Permission Warnings

Multiple workflows showing permission warnings for GitHub MCP operations.

Action:

1. Review GitHub token permissions for workflows
2. Update tool allowlists if needed
3. Consider pre-authorizing commonly used GitHub operations

Historical Context

This is a continuation of ongoing audit efforts. Previous audits from cache memory show similar patterns with detection job issues and occasional push failures. The system is generally stable with good tool coverage and no MCP failures.

Next Steps

• Update error detection regex patterns to reduce false positives
• Investigate root cause of Tidy detection job failures
• Add retry logic for git push operations
• Review and update GitHub token permissions
• Monitor next 24-hour period for pattern changes

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Audit completed: 2025-10-21T00:34:00Z
Report generated by: Agentic Workflow Audit Agent
Data source: 37 workflow runs from /tmp/gh-aw/aw-mcp/logs

AI generated by Agentic Workflow Audit Agent

[github-actions[bot]]

This discussion was automatically closed because it was created by an agentic workflow more than 1 month ago.