[aw-failures] Design Decision Gate: 'Pre-fetch ADR gate PR context' step fails before agent starts

[github-actions]

Fix the Pre-fetch ADR gate PR context step — it fails before the agent starts, so the gate produces zero review output.

Problem

Run 30538838918 (2026-07-30, issue_comment command trigger on PR #49115, branch copilot/add-support-for-local-paths) concluded failure in the agent job. The failed step is Pre-fetch ADR gate PR context — a setup step that runs before checkout and before the Claude Code CLI. Every downstream step in the job (Checkout PR branch, Setup Node.js, Install Claude Code CLI, Execute Claude Code CLI, safe-outputs generation, etc.) is skipped as a result. Turns: 0 and TokenUsage: 0 confirm the agent never ran at all — this is a pure setup-script failure, not an LLM/agent problem.

Affected workflow / run

• .github/workflows/design-decision-gate.lock.yml ("Design Decision Gate 🏗️")
• Run: https://github.com/github/gh-aw/actions/runs/30538838918 (created 2026-07-30T11:30:46Z)

Probable root cause

This is mechanically distinct from #49096 (LLM invocation cap exhausted via permission-denied retries on shell-expanded file paths) — that failure requires the agent to have already started, whereas this run fails in a pre-checkout script before the agent is even invoked. The triggering PR (#49115, "add support for local paths") changes path-handling behavior; it's plausible the ADR gate's own pre-fetch script (likely doing path expansion or file-existence checks against the PR's changed files) broke against this PR's new path semantics — worth checking whether the pre-fetch script hard-codes assumptions that PR #49115 invalidates.

Proposed remediation

1. Pull the full (untruncated) log for the Pre-fetch ADR gate PR context step on run 30538838918 to get the actual exception/exit code — the 50-line tail available during this investigation only showed pre/post-step scaffolding, not the failing command's own output.
2. Once the concrete error is known, harden the pre-fetch script against the path-handling edge case introduced by PR feat: support local skill paths in frontmatter skills: with --from-local #49115 (or whatever the root cause turns out to be), and add a guard so a pre-fetch failure doesn't silently skip the entire gate — consider failing loudly with a clear PR comment instead of a bare job failure.
3. Add a fixture/test PR with unusual path characters (matching feat: support local skill paths in frontmatter skills: with --from-local #49115's scope) to regression-test the pre-fetch step specifically.

Success criteria

• The Pre-fetch ADR gate PR context step succeeds (or fails with an actionable error surfaced to the PR) for PRs touching path-handling logic like feat: support local skill paths in frontmatter skills: with --from-local #49115.
• A repeat run of Design Decision Gate against a similar PR completes through to Execute Claude Code CLI rather than skipping every downstream step.

Parent report: #49095. Analyzed via agenticworkflows audit on run 30538838918 during the 2026-07-30 13:19 UTC failure-investigation pass.
Related to #49095

Generated by 🔍 [aw] Failure Investigator (6h) · agent · 180.1 AIC · ⌖ 21.7 AIC · ⊞ 6.8K · ◷

• expires on Aug 6, 2026, 5:37 AM UTC-08:00

---

Warning

Threat Detection Engine Failure — The analysis engine could not complete. This is a tooling failure, not a security finding.

What happened

The threat detection engine failed to produce results.

Review the workflow run logs for details.

Note: a second, distinct Design Decision Gate failure mode this cycle

Two Design Decision Gate failures on 2026-08-06 (§31102987927, §31102680214) fail at the Execute Claude Code CLI agent step (exit code 1), not the Pre-fetch ADR gate PR context step this issue tracks. Root cause wasn't conclusively identified from the available log tail (the real error line falls outside the captured window) — flagging here only so the two failure modes on this workflow aren't conflated as one bug. Both runs recovered cleanly on the next invocation (§31105057649, success). Full analysis in this cycle's Failure Investigator report.> Generated by 🔍 [aw] Failure Investigator (6h) · agent · 177.3 AIC · ⊞ 5.2K · ◷

[github-actions]

Warning

threat detection engine error
The threat detection engine encountered an error and could not complete analysis. This is a tooling failure, not a security finding.

Details

The threat detection engine failed to produce results.

Review the workflow run logs for details.

🍪 Issue Monster selected this for Copilot

I have identified this issue as a good candidate for automated resolution and requested assignment to the Copilot coding agent.

If assignment succeeds, the Copilot coding agent will analyze the issue and create a pull request with the fix.

Om nom nom! 🍪

🍪 Om nom nom by Issue Monster · gpt54 · 3.04 AIC · ⊞ 10K · ◷

[github-actions]

Warning

threat detection engine error
The threat detection engine encountered an error and could not complete analysis. This is a tooling failure, not a security finding.

Details

The threat detection engine failed to produce results.

Review the workflow run logs for details.

🍪 Issue Monster selected this for Copilot

I identified this issue as a good candidate for automated resolution and requested assignment to the Copilot coding agent.

If assignment succeeds, the Copilot coding agent will analyze the issue and create a pull request with the fix.

Om nom nom! 🍪

🍪 Om nom nom by Issue Monster · gpt54 · 3.71 AIC · ⊞ 10K · ◷