[Pelis Agent Factory Advisor] Agentic Workflow Maturity Assessment & Recommendations

[github-actions[bot]]

📊 Executive Summary

The gh-aw-firewall repository demonstrates strong agentic workflow adoption with 11 operational workflows covering security, issue management, planning, and release automation. However, significant opportunities exist to enhance automation maturity by adding workflows for CI failure diagnosis, documentation maintenance, test coverage improvement, and dependency monitoring - all patterns proven effective in Pelis Agent Factory.

Current Maturity: Level 3/5 (Productive) → Target: Level 4/5 (Optimized)

The repository excels at security automation but has gaps in continuous improvement workflows that would be highly valuable for a security-critical tool.

---

🎓 Patterns Learned from Pelis Agent Factory

Key Principles Applied in 100+ Workflows

1. Diversity Over Perfection: Multiple specialized agents (100+ workflows) outperform one universal agent
2. Repository-Level Automation: Embedded agents have outsized impact on development velocity
3. Guardrails Enable Innovation: Strict permissions (safe-outputs, scoped tools) enable safe experimentation
4. Meta-Agents for Health: Workflows that monitor and improve other workflows
5. Cost-Quality Tradeoffs: Shorter, focused workflows often more effective than lengthy analyses

Workflow Categories in Pelis Factory

• Triage & Issue Management: issue-triage, pr-labeler, staleness-checker
• CI/CD Health: ci-doctor, failure-investigator, flaky-test-detector
• Documentation: doc-updater, glossary-maintainer, docs-noob-tester, blog-auditor
• Code Quality: continuous-simplicity, refactoring, style-improver
• Security & Compliance: secrets-scanner, vulnerability-campaign-manager, firewall-validator
• Testing & Validation: test-coverage-improver, performance-optimizer
• Operations: release-automation, dependency-updater
• Culture: team-status, morale-boost, celebration-bot

Comparison to gh-aw-firewall

Strengths:

• ✅ Strong security workflow coverage (security-guard, security-review)
• ✅ Sophisticated issue management (issue-monster with scoring)
• ✅ Planning automation (plan command with sub-issues)
• ✅ Release automation (release.md, update-release-notes.md)

Gaps:

• ❌ No CI failure investigation workflow (despite complex Docker/networking tests)
• ❌ No documentation maintenance workflows (despite 16+ doc files)
• ❌ No test coverage improvement workflow (critical for security tool)
• ❌ No dependency monitoring workflow (security tool needs proactive updates)
• ❌ No performance monitoring workflow (Docker/networking performance critical)

---

📋 Current Agentic Workflow Inventory

Workflow	Purpose	Trigger	Assessment
security-guard.md	Reviews PRs for security weakening changes	PR (opened/sync/reopened)	✅ Excellent - Comprehensive security checks, well-scoped
security-review.md	Security review workflow	TBD	⚠️ Review - May overlap with security-guard
issue-monster.md	Assigns up to 3 issues to Copilot agents	Schedule (hourly)	✅ Good - Sophisticated scoring, but could integrate with test coverage data
issue-duplication-detector.md	Detects duplicate issues	Issue opened	✅ Good - Reduces triage burden
plan.md	Creates project plans and sub-issues	/plan command	✅ Excellent - Enables structured work breakdown
pelis-agent-factory-advisor.md	Analyzes agentic workflow opportunities	Manual/Schedule	✅ Good - Meta-agent for continuous improvement
ci-cd-gaps-assessment.md	Assesses CI/CD gaps	Manual	⚠️ Underutilized - Could run more frequently
smoke-claude.md	Smoke tests with Claude	Manual	✅ Good - Multi-engine testing
smoke-copilot.md	Smoke tests with Copilot	Manual	✅ Good - Multi-engine testing
release.md	Release automation	Tag push	✅ Good - Streamlines releases
update-release-notes.md	Updates release notes	Release published	✅ Good - Keeps release docs current

Traditional CI/CD: build.yml, lint.yml, test-*.yml, codeql.yml, container-scan.yml, dependency-audit.yml, deploy-docs.yml

---

🚀 Actionable Recommendations

P0 - Implement Immediately

1. CI Failure Doctor

What: Automated workflow that investigates CI/CD failures, analyzes logs, identifies root causes, and creates detailed investigation reports with remediation steps.

Why:

• Complex Docker/networking tests in this repo frequently fail with opaque errors
• Manual log analysis wastes developer time
• Accumulated knowledge about failure patterns helps prevent recurrence
• Security-critical tool needs reliable CI/CD

How: Adapt from agentics/ci-doctor.md

Effort: Low (template exists, customize for Docker/networking failures)

Example:

---
description: Investigates CI failures and provides root cause analysis
on:
  workflow_run:
    workflows: ["test-integration", "test-coverage", "test-action"]
    types: [completed]
    branches: [main]
if: ${{ github.event.workflow_run.conclusion == 'failure' }}
permissions: read-all
tools:
  github:
    toolsets: [default, workflow_runs]
  cache-memory: true
safe-outputs:
  create-issue:
    title-prefix: "[CI Failure] "
    labels: [bug, ci, needs-investigation]
  add-comment: {}
timeout-minutes: 10
---

# CI Failure Doctor

You are an expert at diagnosing GitHub Actions failures in Docker/networking contexts.

## Investigation Protocol
1. Get failed workflow run details and job logs
2. Analyze for Docker network issues, container conflicts, iptables problems
3. Check for resource exhaustion (network pools, container limits)
4. Search for similar past failures in cache-memory
5. Create detailed investigation report with specific remediation steps
6. Update knowledge base with new failure patterns

## Domain-Specific Focus
- Docker network pool exhaustion ("subnet pool overlap")
- Container cleanup race conditions
- iptables rule conflicts
- Squid proxy startup failures
- GitHub Actions runner Docker incompatibilities

---

2. Documentation Maintainer

What: Daily workflow that reviews documentation files (16+ docs in /docs/, README.md, AGENTS.md) and creates PRs to keep them synchronized with code changes.

Why:

• 16+ documentation files that drift out of sync with code
• Architecture changes (e.g., PR feat: remove Docker-in-Docker support #205 removed Docker-in-Docker) need doc updates
• Security tool requires accurate documentation for safe usage
• Reduces manual documentation burden on developers

How: Adapt from Pelis Factory's daily-doc-updater

Effort: Low-Medium (template exists, customize for firewall domain)

Example:

---
description: Maintains documentation accuracy by reviewing recent code changes
on:
  schedule: daily
  workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
  contents: read
network:
  firewall:
    version: "v0.10.0"
tools:
  github:
    toolsets: [default, pull_requests]
safe-outputs:
  create-pull-request:
    title-prefix: "[docs] "
    labels: [documentation, ai-generated]
    branch-prefix: "docs/update-"
timeout-minutes: 15
---

# Documentation Maintainer

Review recent code changes in the past 7 days and update documentation to reflect:

1. **Architecture changes**: Docker configuration, container setup, network topology
2. **API changes**: CLI flags, configuration options, environment variables
3. **Usage examples**: MCP setup, firewall rules, domain whitelisting
4. **Security guidance**: Capability dropping, iptables rules, Squid configuration

## Focus Areas
- `/docs/architecture.md` - Container and network architecture
- `/docs/usage.md` - CLI usage and examples
- `/docs/mcp-config.md` - MCP server configuration (CRITICAL)
- `README.md` - Overview and quick start
- `AGENTS.md` - Agent development guidelines

## Quality Standards
- Verify code examples execute correctly
- Ensure security guidance is accurate and complete
- Keep examples minimal and focused
- Update version numbers when applicable

---

P1 - Plan for Near-Term

3. Test Coverage Improver

What: Weekly workflow that analyzes test coverage, identifies under-tested code paths (especially security-critical areas), and creates PRs with additional tests.

Why:

• Security-critical firewall tool requires comprehensive test coverage
• Untested code paths = potential security vulnerabilities
• Proactive rather than reactive testing approach
• Current coverage: 75-80% (per COVERAGE_SUMMARY.md) - can improve

How: Adapt from agentics/daily-test-improver.md

Effort: Medium (requires coverage analysis integration)

Example:

---
description: Identifies under-tested code and creates PRs with additional tests
on:
  schedule: weekly
  workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
  contents: read
tools:
  github:
    toolsets: [default, pull_requests]
safe-outputs:
  create-pull-request:
    title-prefix: "[test] "
    labels: [testing, test-coverage, ai-generated]
    branch-prefix: "test/coverage-"
    max: 1
timeout-minutes: 20
---

# Test Coverage Improver

Analyze test coverage and create ONE PR with additional tests.

## Priority Areas (security-critical)
1. **iptables management** (`src/host-iptables.ts`, `containers/agent/setup-iptables.sh`)
2. **Squid configuration** (`src/squid-config.ts`) - ACL rules, domain patterns
3. **Container security** (`src/docker-manager.ts`) - capability dropping, seccomp
4. **Domain validation** (`src/domain-patterns.ts`) - wildcard patterns, protocol handling

## Test Requirements
- Unit tests for security-critical functions
- Integration tests for Docker/networking interactions
- Edge cases for domain pattern validation
- Error handling for iptables failures
- Capability dropping verification

---

4. Dependency Security Monitor

What: Daily workflow that monitors dependencies for security vulnerabilities, creates issues for high-severity CVEs, and proposes safe dependency updates.

Why:

• Security tool must have secure dependencies
• Proactive vulnerability management
• Automated dependency updates reduce maintenance burden
• Existing dependency-audit.yml is reactive, not proactive

How: Adapt from agentics/daily-dependency-updates.md

Effort: Low (leverage existing dependency-audit workflow)

Example:

---
description: Monitors dependencies for security issues and proposes updates
on:
  schedule: daily
  workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
  contents: read
tools:
  github:
    toolsets: [default, pull_requests]
safe-outputs:
  create-issue:
    title-prefix: "[security] "
    labels: [security, dependencies, vulnerability]
  create-pull-request:
    title-prefix: "[deps] "
    labels: [dependencies, security]
    branch-prefix: "deps/update-"
    max: 1
timeout-minutes: 10
---

# Dependency Security Monitor

## Task 1: Check for Vulnerabilities
Run `npm audit` and analyze results for HIGH and CRITICAL vulnerabilities.

## Task 2: Create Security Issues
For each HIGH/CRITICAL vulnerability:
- Create an issue with CVE details, affected package, and remediation steps
- Label with severity (high/critical)
- Assign to security-review workflow

## Task 3: Safe Dependency Updates
For low-risk updates (patch versions of direct dependencies):
- Create ONE PR with updates
- Include test results showing no regressions
- Document breaking changes (if any)

---

P2 - Consider for Roadmap

5. Performance Monitoring Workflow

What: Weekly workflow that benchmarks Docker container startup time, Squid proxy latency, iptables rule performance, and creates issues for performance regressions.

Why:

• Firewall performance impacts all agent workflows
• Container startup time affects CI/CD speed
• Networking latency affects agent responsiveness
• Proactive performance optimization

How: Adapt from agentics/daily-perf-improver.md

Effort: Medium-High (requires benchmark infrastructure)

Example:

---
description: Monitors firewall performance and identifies regressions
on:
  schedule: weekly
  workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
  contents: read
tools:
  github:
    toolsets: [default]
  cache-memory: true
safe-outputs:
  create-issue:
    title-prefix: "[performance] "
    labels: [performance, needs-investigation]
timeout-minutes: 30
---

# Performance Monitor

Benchmark key performance metrics and track trends over time.

## Metrics to Track
1. Container startup time (cold start, warm start)
2. Squid proxy latency (HTTP, HTTPS)
3. iptables rule overhead
4. Memory footprint (Squid container, agent container)
5. Docker network creation time

## Store Results
Save benchmark results to cache-memory with timestamp and commit SHA.

## Report Regressions
Create issue if performance degrades >10% from baseline.

---

6. Documentation Quality Validator

What: Weekly workflow that tests documentation for broken links, outdated examples, unclear instructions, and accessibility issues.

Why:

• Complex firewall setup requires accurate documentation
• Broken examples frustrate users and waste time
• Documentation quality reflects on project maturity

How: Adapt from Pelis Factory docs-noob-tester and blog-auditor

Effort: Low-Medium (mostly validation scripts)

Example:

---
description: Validates documentation quality and accuracy
on:
  schedule: weekly
  workflow_dispatch:
permissions:
  contents: read
tools:
  github:
    toolsets: [default]
safe-outputs:
  create-issue:
    title-prefix: "[docs] "
    labels: [documentation, quality]
timeout-minutes: 15
---

# Documentation Quality Validator

## Validation Checks
1. **Broken Links**: Scan all markdown files for 404 links
2. **Code Examples**: Verify CLI examples match current syntax
3. **Version References**: Check version numbers are current
4. **Clarity**: Test quick start guide as a new user would
5. **Completeness**: Ensure all CLI flags documented
6. **Security Guidance**: Verify security best practices are accurate

## Test Documentation Site
Visit https://githubnext.github.io/gh-aw-firewall/ (if deployed) and verify:
- Navigation works
- Examples render correctly
- Search functionality works

---

7. Security Changelog Generator

What: Workflow that automatically generates security-focused changelogs highlighting security fixes, vulnerability patches, and security-relevant changes.

Why:

• Security tool users need to know about security updates
• Manual changelog maintenance misses security implications
• Compliance and audit requirements

Effort: Low (integrate with existing release workflow)

Example: Enhance release.md workflow to include security section that:

• Parses commits for security keywords (CVE, vulnerability, security, XSS, injection)
• Highlights dependency updates with security fixes
• Calls out capability changes and permission modifications
• Generates dedicated SECURITY_CHANGELOG.md

---

P3 - Future Ideas

8. Flaky Test Detector

What: Workflow that tracks test failure patterns, identifies flaky tests (tests that fail intermittently), and creates issues to stabilize them.

Why: Flaky tests reduce CI/CD reliability and waste time

Effort: Medium (requires test history analysis)

---

9. Repository Health Dashboard

What: Weekly status report issue that summarizes repository health: test coverage trends, open issue age, security posture, documentation quality, dependency freshness.

Why: Provides visibility into overall project health

Effort: Medium (aggregates data from multiple sources)

---

10. Community Engagement Bot

What: Workflow that thanks new contributors, welcomes first-time issue reporters, and celebrates PR milestones.

Why: Builds community and encourages contributions

Effort: Low (simple GitHub API interactions)

---

📈 Maturity Assessment

Current Level: 3/5 - Productive

What this means:

• ✅ Multiple specialized workflows (11 agentic + traditional CI/CD)
• ✅ Strong security automation (security-guard, security-review)
• ✅ Issue management automation (issue-monster, duplication detector)
• ✅ Planning automation (plan command)
• ⚠️ Gaps in continuous improvement (CI doctor, doc maintenance, test coverage)
• ⚠️ Limited workflow integration and chaining

Target Level: 4/5 - Optimized

To reach Level 4, implement:

1. ✅ CI failure investigation (P0)
2. ✅ Documentation maintenance (P0)
3. ✅ Test coverage improvement (P1)
4. ✅ Dependency monitoring (P1)
5. ✅ Workflow chaining and integration
6. ✅ Knowledge accumulation via cache-memory

Gap Analysis:

Capability	Current	Target	Priority
CI/CD Health	⚠️ Manual log analysis	✅ Automated investigation	P0
Documentation	⚠️ Manual updates	✅ Automated maintenance	P0
Test Coverage	⚠️ 75-80% static	✅ Continuous improvement	P1
Dependency Security	⚠️ Reactive audits	✅ Proactive monitoring	P1
Performance	⚠️ No monitoring	⚠️ Weekly benchmarks	P2
Workflow Integration	⚠️ Isolated workflows	⚠️ Chained workflows	P2

---

🔄 Comparison with Best Practices

What gh-aw-firewall Does Well

1. Security-First Automation: Excellent PR security review (security-guard) with comprehensive checks
2. Sophisticated Issue Management: issue-monster with priority scoring system
3. Planning Automation: /plan command creates structured sub-issues
4. Multi-Engine Testing: Both Claude and Copilot smoke tests
5. Domain Expertise: Workflows understand firewall/Docker/networking context

What gh-aw-firewall Could Improve

1. CI/CD Health: Add failure investigation and pattern learning
2. Documentation Lifecycle: Automate documentation updates and validation
3. Continuous Quality: Add test coverage improvement and performance monitoring
4. Workflow Integration: Chain workflows (e.g., CI failure → security review → fix assignment)
5. Knowledge Accumulation: Use cache-memory to build failure pattern database

Unique Opportunities for Firewall/Security Domain

1. Firewall Rule Validator: Weekly workflow that tests domain whitelist comprehensiveness

   • Scans codebase for new external API calls
   • Verifies domain whitelist covers new dependencies
   • Creates PRs to update firewall rules

2. Security Regression Tester: Workflow that tests historical security vulnerabilities

   • Maintains library of past security issues
   • Verifies fixes still work after code changes
   • Prevents security regression

3. Container Security Auditor: Daily scan of container configurations

   • Verifies capability dropping (NET_ADMIN, SYS_PTRACE, etc.)
   • Checks seccomp profile completeness
   • Validates resource limits are in place

4. Network Traffic Analyzer: Weekly analysis of Squid logs

   • Identifies unusual domain access patterns
   • Detects potential data exfiltration attempts
   • Creates security alerts for investigation

---

📝 Next Steps

Immediate Actions (This Week)

1. Implement CI Failure Doctor (P0)

   • Copy template from agentics/ci-doctor.md
   • Customize for Docker/networking failure patterns
   • Add Docker network pool exhaustion detection
   • Test with recent test-integration failures

2. Set Up Documentation Maintainer (P0)

   • Copy template from daily-doc-updater
   • Configure to watch /docs/, README.md, AGENTS.md
   • Focus on MCP configuration docs (frequently outdated)
   • Run manually first, then schedule daily

3. Plan Test Coverage Improver (P1)

   • Review current coverage (COVERAGE_SUMMARY.md: 75-80%)
   • Identify security-critical untested paths
   • Prepare for weekly implementation

Near-Term (This Month)

4. Add Dependency Security Monitor (P1)
5. Integrate Workflows: Chain CI-doctor → security-review → issue-monster
6. Review Workflow Performance: Optimize timeout-minutes, reduce redundancy

Long-Term (This Quarter)

7. Performance Monitoring (P2)
8. Documentation Quality Validator (P2)
9. Domain-Specific Workflows: Firewall rule validator, container security auditor

---

📚 Resources

• Pelis Agent Factory Blog: https://githubnext.github.io/gh-aw/blog/2026-01-12-welcome-to-pelis-agent-factory/
• Workflow Collection: https://github.com/githubnext/agentics
• Quick Start Guide: https://githubnext.github.io/gh-aw/setup/quick-start/
• 19-Part Workflow Tour: https://githubnext.github.io/gh-aw/blog/2026-01-13-meet-the-workflows/

---

🎯 Success Metrics

Track progress with these metrics:

1. CI/CD Efficiency

   • Time to diagnose CI failures: Target <30 minutes (currently manual)
   • CI failure resolution time: Target <2 hours
   • CI failure recurrence rate: Target <5%

2. Documentation Quality

   • Documentation drift (days out of sync): Target <7 days
   • Broken links: Target 0
   • Outdated examples: Target 0

3. Test Coverage

   • Overall coverage: Target >85% (currently 75-80%)
   • Security-critical path coverage: Target >95%
   • Test addition rate: Target +5-10 tests/week

4. Dependency Security

   • Time to patch HIGH/CRITICAL CVEs: Target <48 hours
   • Dependency freshness: Target <30 days old

5. Workflow Maturity

   • Active agentic workflows: Target 15+ (currently 11)
   • Workflow integration chains: Target 3+ chains
   • Knowledge base entries: Target 50+ patterns

---

Generated by Pelis Agent Factory Advisor - helping repositories maximize their agentic workflow potential 🤖✨

AI generated by Pelis Agent Factory Advisor

[Mossaka]

/plan

[github-actions[bot]]

🎉 Yo ho ho! Plan Command found the treasure and completed successfully! ⚓💰