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[agent-efficiency] Recurring failed-run patterns in 7-day agent workflow logs #1867

Description

@github-actions

Scope

Lookback window analyzed: 2026-08-12T17:07:53Z to 2026-08-19T17:07:53Z.

Data sources:

  • /tmp/gh-aw/failed_runs.json (failed-run metadata)
  • /tmp/gh-aw/errors.json (pre-extracted error snippets)
  • /tmp/gh-aw/logs/<run_id>/ (agent/detection/conclusion step logs)
  • GitHub MCP run metadata across discovered downstream repositories using elastic/ai-github-actions workflow references.

Per-repository run summary (last 7 days)

Repository Total runs Success Failure Cancelled Skipped Action required Other Pass rate (success/(success+failure))
elastic/ai-github-actions 107 70 13 0 8 16 0 84.3%
elastic/beats 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 n/a
elastic/elastic-agent 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 n/a
elastic/elastic-package 206 14 8 0 184 0 0 63.6%
elastic/elastic-ramen 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 n/a
elastic/fleet-server 224 20 4 0 200 0 0 83.3%
elastic/integrations 144 0 0 0 141 1 2 n/a
elastic/logstash 252 7 4 0 241 0 0 63.6%
elastic/oblt-aw 126 53 2 63 8 0 0 96.4%
elastic/observability-robots-playground-public 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 n/a
elastic/package-registry 322 1 2 0 319 0 0 33.3%

Behavioral patterns observed in failed runs

1) Pre-agent runtime setup crash on empty UV_PATH (10 runs)

What happened
Ten failed runs crashed in the agent job before useful agent execution due to a symlink command receiving an empty source path:

  • Run: https://github.com/elastic/ai-github-actions/actions/runs/32257301083
  • Log: /tmp/gh-aw/logs/32257301083/4_run _ agent.txt
  • Evidence:
    • 2026-08-19T13:19:48.0330381Z UV_PATH:
    • 2026-08-19T13:19:48.0485612Z ln: failed to create symbolic link '/opt/hostedtoolcache/gh-aw-tools/current/x64/bin/uv' -> '': No such file or directory
    • 2026-08-19T13:19:48.0497914Z ##[error]Process completed with exit code 1.

How many / where

  • 10/13 failed runs in this window.
  • Affected workflows:
    • .github/workflows/trigger-code-complexity-detector.yml (5)
    • .github/workflows/trigger-code-duplication-detector.yml (5)

Root cause location in repo

  • .github/workflows/gh-aw-fragments/runtime-setup.md lines 44-50 set UV_PATH from steps.setup-uv.outputs.uv-path and unconditionally run:
    • sudo ln -sf "$UV_PATH" "$toolcache_bin/uv"

Related tracking signal

2) Detection step invoking missing awf binary (1 run)

What happened
One failed run exited in detection with awf unavailable:

How many / where

  • 1/13 failed runs.
  • Affected workflow:
    • .github/workflows/trigger-information-architecture.yml (1)

Root cause evidence

  • Failure originates from generated temp script (...b50efba3...sh) during detection; root cause is outside this repository’s checked-in workflow source files.

3) Agent failure with opaque error extraction fallback (1 run)

What happened
One failed run ended with a generic agent exit and conclusion fallback that did not identify a specific error pattern:

  • Run: https://github.com/elastic/ai-github-actions/actions/runs/32037995849
  • Agent log (/tmp/gh-aw/logs/32037995849/3_run _ agent.txt):
    • 2026-08-17T14:23:56.4060335Z [WARN] Command completed with exit code: 1
    • 2026-08-17T14:23:56.4164499Z ##[error]Process completed with exit code 1.
  • Conclusion log (/tmp/gh-aw/logs/32037995849/0_run _ conclusion.txt):
    • 2026-08-17T14:25:36.1938210Z No specific error patterns found; including last 10 line(s) of agent-stdio.log as fallback

How many / where

  • 1/13 failed runs.
  • Affected workflow:
    • .github/workflows/trigger-refactor-opportunist.yml (1)

Root cause evidence

  • Error surfaced only as generic exit code + fallback parsing path in conclusion, with no specific categorized cause in logs.

Excluded from pattern reporting

The failure in trigger-stale-issues-investigator (run 32041434591) is treated as a one-off infrastructure failure per assignment criteria (download-artifact retries ending in 503 in detection log lines 32-37), and is not included as a recurring behavior pattern.

Generated by Internal: Agent Efficiency · gpt53codex · 114.2 AIC · ⌖ 4.91 AIC · ⊞ 29.6K ·

  • expires on Aug 26, 2026, 5:21 PM UTC

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