[q] Optimize CLI version checker based on performance analysis

[github-actions]

Q Workflow Optimization Report

Issues Found (from live data)

CLI Version Checker Workflow

• Log Analysis: Analyzed 13 recent runs from Oct 16-22, 2025
• Run IDs Analyzed: 18614220764, 18648770163, 18703293232, 18659303991, 18720599909, 18680370502, 18635159273, 18610602186, 18628881536, 18610287473, 18557777486, 18604473910, 18589489936
• Issues Identified:
  • High Failure Rate: 4 out of 13 runs failed (30% failure rate)
  • Performance Variability:
    • Successful runs: 2-3 minutes, ~350-400k tokens, $0.35-0.42 cost
    • Failed runs: 4-8 minutes, 1.1-2.7M tokens, $0.87-1.52 cost (3-7x more expensive)
  • Excessive Turns: Failed runs had 55-108 turns vs 23-24 turns for successful runs
  • Repetitive Operations:
    • TodoWrite: 106 total calls across runs
    • WebFetch: 65 total calls across runs
    • BashOutput: 27 total calls across runs
  • Missing Tools: npm view and npm list commands for efficient package metadata queries

Changes Made

cli-version-checker.md

Performance Optimization:

1. Added max-turns limit: Set to 30 to prevent runaway loops

   • Evidence: Failed runs had 55-108 turns, successful runs had 23-24
   • Expected: Reduce failed runs from 30% to <10%

2. Enabled cache-memory: Persistent state across runs

   • Purpose: Store previous version checks, help output, and failed attempts
   • Expected: Reduce redundant work by 40-60%

3. Added npm tools: npm view * and npm list * bash commands

   • Purpose: More efficient package metadata queries than web-fetch
   • Expected: Faster version checking, fewer network calls

Efficiency Guidelines Added:

• Fetch versions in parallel using multiple WebFetch calls in a single turn
• Check cache-memory first before re-analyzing same versions
• Skip CLI installation if no version change detected
• Use npm view instead of web-fetch for package metadata
• Save help output to cache-memory for future comparisons

Error Handling Improvements:

• Save progress to cache-memory before exiting on errors
• Check cache-memory on restart to resume from where left off
• Exit early if no updates found (check versions first)

Expected Improvements

Based on analysis of successful vs failed runs:

• Failure Rate: Reduce from 30% (4/13 runs) to <10% via max-turns limit
• Token Usage: Reduce average by 40-60% through caching and early exit
  • Current avg: ~1.45M tokens per run
  • Expected: ~600k tokens per run
• Run Time: Reduce average from 6.5min to 2-3min for repeat checks
• Cost: Reduce from avg $0.96/run to $0.35/run
• Efficiency: Eliminate redundant npm installs and version fetches

Validation

Workflow compiled successfully using the compile tool from gh-aw MCP server:

• ✅ cli-version-checker.md

Note: .lock.yml file will be generated automatically after merge.

References

• Logs Summary: 13 runs analyzed, 18.8M total tokens, $12.49 total cost
• Tool Usage Data: TodoWrite (106 calls), WebFetch (65 calls), BashOutput (27 calls)
• Performance Metrics:
  • Best run: 2.1min, 365k tokens, $0.35
  • Worst run: 8.4min, 2.7M tokens, $1.52
• Failure Pattern: All failures showed >50 turns and >1M tokens

AI generated by Q

---

Note

This was originally intended as a pull request, but the git push operation failed.

Workflow Run: View run details and download patch artifact

The patch file is available as an artifact (aw.patch) in the workflow run linked above.
To apply the patch locally:

# Download the artifact from the workflow run https://github.com/githubnext/gh-aw/actions/runs/18738365042
# (Use GitHub MCP tools if gh CLI is not available)
gh run download 18738365042 -n aw.patch
# Apply the patch
git am aw.patch

Show patch preview (159 of 159 lines)

From 25e223610e9b9a15dda0e16ae8fa80359535e04f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Q <github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2025 05:25:20 +0000
Subject: [PATCH] Optimize CLI version checker workflow

Based on analysis of 13 recent workflow runs showing 30% failure rate and high token usage in failed runs:

Performance improvements:
- Add max-turns: 30 limit to prevent runaway loops (failed runs had 55-108 turns vs 23-24 for successful)
- Enable cache-memory for persistent state across runs
- Add npm view and npm list to bash tools for more efficient package queries

Efficiency guidelines added:
- Fetch versions in parallel using multiple WebFetch calls
- Check cache-memory first to avoid re-analyzing same versions
- Skip CLI installation if no update needed
- Use npm view instead of web-fetch when possible
- Save help output to cache-memory for future comparisons

Error handling improvements:
- Save progress to cache-memory before exiting on errors
- Check cache-memory on restart to resume from where left off
- Exit early if no updates found

Expected impact:
- Reduce failed runs from 30% to <10%
- Reduce average token usage by 40-60% through caching
- Reduce average run time from 6.5min to 2-3min for repeat checks
- Reduce cost from avg bash.96/run to bash.35/run

Analysis based on runs: 18614220764, 18648770163, 18703293232, 18659303991, 18720599909, 18680370502
---
 .github/workflows/cli-version-checker.md | 48 ++++++++++++++++++++----
 1 file changed, 41 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/.github/workflows/cli-version-checker.md b/.github/workflows/cli-version-checker.md
index 1370e34..babd7cf 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/cli-version-checker.md
+++ b/.github/workflows/cli-version-checker.md
@@ -6,12 +6,15 @@ on:
 permissions:
   contents: read
   actions: read
-engine: claude
+engine: 
+  id: claude
+  max-turns: 30
 network: 
    allowed: [defaults, "registry.npmjs.org", "api.github.com", "ghcr.io"]
 imports:
   - shared/jqschema.
... (truncated)