🏥 Safe Output Health Report - 2026-01-22

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Executive Summary

• Period: Last 24 hours (2026-01-22)
• Runs Analyzed: 10
• Workflows Active: 6 distinct workflows
• Safe Output Jobs Executed: 9
• Safe Output Jobs Failed: 2
• Error Clusters Identified: 1
• Overall Success Rate: 77.78% (down from 100% yesterday)

Safe Output Job Statistics

Job Type	Total Executions	Failures	Success Rate
add_comment	18	2	88.89%
add_labels	7	0	100%
create_issue	2	0	100%
update_pull_request	2	0	100%
push_to_pull_request_branch	2	0	100%

Error Clusters

Cluster 1: add_comment "Not Found" Error

• Count: 2 occurrences
• Affected Jobs: add_comment
• Affected Workflows: Smoke Codex, Smoke Copilot
• Sample Error:

  ##[error]Failed to add comment: Not Found
  ##[error]✗ Message 1 (add_comment) failed: Not Found
  

• Root Cause: Agents attempted to add comments to discussion Oracle of Embered Circuits: The Smoke Test Augury #11400 which no longer exists. The discussion was likely deleted between agent execution and safe output job execution, creating a race condition.
• Impact: Partial failures - other operations in the same safe output job completed successfully. No data loss or system impact. The workflows still created issues and added comments to other targets successfully.

View Detailed Error Analysis

Affected Runs

1. Run 21268398422 - Smoke Codex

   • URL: §21268398422
   • Timestamp: 2026-01-22T23:23:07Z
   • Target: Discussion Oracle of Embered Circuits: The Smoke Test Augury #11400
   • Status: Partial failure (1/3 operations failed)
   • Successful Operations: Comment added to PR Add discussion commenting to smoke workflows with explicit instructions, deprecate discussion flag #11360, label "smoke-codex" added to PR Add discussion commenting to smoke workflows with explicit instructions, deprecate discussion flag #11360

2. Run 21268398431 - Smoke Copilot

   • URL: §21268398431
   • Timestamp: 2026-01-22T23:22:44Z
   • Target: Discussion Oracle of Embered Circuits: The Smoke Test Augury #11400
   • Status: Partial failure (1/4 operations failed)
   • Successful Operations: Issue Smoke Test: Copilot - 21268398431 #11405 created, comment added to PR Add discussion commenting to smoke workflows with explicit instructions, deprecate discussion flag #11360, label "smoke-copilot" added to PR Add discussion commenting to smoke workflows with explicit instructions, deprecate discussion flag #11360

Context

Three smoke test workflows (Claude, Codex, Copilot) were configured to add comments to discussion #11400 as part of their test validation. Run 21268398447 (Smoke Claude) executed first and successfully added its comment. However, by the time runs 21268398422 (Smoke Codex) and 21268398431 (Smoke Copilot) executed their safe output jobs, discussion #11400 had been deleted, resulting in 404 Not Found errors.

Root Cause Analysis

API-Related Issues

The only errors encountered were HTTP 404 "Not Found" responses when attempting to add comments to a discussion that no longer existed. This is a race condition inherent in distributed systems:

1. Agent executes and queries discussion Oracle of Embered Circuits: The Smoke Test Augury #11400 (exists)
2. Agent completes and outputs safe output instructions to add comment to Oracle of Embered Circuits: The Smoke Test Augury #11400
3. Discussion Oracle of Embered Circuits: The Smoke Test Augury #11400 is deleted (manually or by another workflow)
4. Safe output job executes and attempts to add comment to Oracle of Embered Circuits: The Smoke Test Augury #11400 (404 error)

This pattern suggests the discussion was deleted between agent execution (23:18-23:23) and safe output job execution. Given that three smoke test runs all targeted the same discussion, it's likely one of the smoke tests or another workflow closed/deleted the discussion after the agents had already decided to comment on it.

No Data Validation Issues

All other safe output operations completed successfully, indicating that data parsing, validation, and JSON formatting are working correctly.

No Permission Issues

All operations that targeted existing resources succeeded without permission errors, confirming that authentication and authorization are functioning properly.

Recommendations

Critical Issues (Immediate Action Required)

None identified. The errors are expected race conditions in a distributed system and don't indicate bugs or systemic problems.

Bug Fixes Required

1. Improve 404 Error Handling in add_comment
   • Priority: Low
   • Root Cause: The safe output handler treats 404 errors as failures when they're expected race conditions
   • Fix: Modify the add_comment handler to treat 404 errors as warnings rather than failures
   • Affected Jobs: add_comment
   • Rationale: When a target resource is deleted between agent execution and safe output job execution, this is an expected race condition, not a system failure. The job should log a warning and continue processing other operations.

Configuration Changes

1. Add Retry Logic with Exponential Backoff
   • Current: Safe output jobs make single API call attempts
   • Recommended: Implement retry logic with exponential backoff for transient failures (rate limits, network errors)
   • Reason: Would improve resilience against temporary API issues without masking genuine errors
   • Note: 404 errors should NOT be retried as they indicate the resource no longer exists

Process Improvements

1. Differentiate Error Severity Levels

   • Current State: All failures are reported as errors with equal severity
   • Proposed: Implement error classification:
     • Critical: Permission errors, API authentication failures, unhandled exceptions
     • Warning: Resource not found (404), already exists conflicts (409)
     • Info: Rate limit warnings, successful retries
   • Benefits: Better signal-to-noise ratio in monitoring, clearer priority for issue resolution

2. Add Pre-flight Resource Validation

   • Current State: Safe output jobs blindly attempt operations on target resources
   • Proposed: Optional pre-flight check to verify resource exists before attempting operations
   • Benefits: Prevents unnecessary API calls, provides clearer error messages
   • Trade-offs: Additional API calls, increased latency, potential for TOCTOU (time-of-check-time-of-use) race conditions

Work Item Plans

Work Item 1: Improve 404 Error Handling

• Type: Enhancement

• Priority: Low

• Description: Modify the add_comment safe output handler to treat 404 Not Found errors as warnings rather than failures, since they indicate expected race conditions where resources are deleted between agent execution and safe output job execution.

• Acceptance Criteria:

  • 404 errors logged as warnings instead of errors
  • Safe output job continues processing remaining operations after 404
  • Workflow status remains "success" when only 404 errors occur
  • 404 errors still appear in job logs for debugging visibility
  • Other error codes (403, 500, etc.) still treated as failures

• Technical Approach:

  1. Update error handling in /opt/gh-aw/actions/safe_output_handler_manager.cjs
  2. Add error classification logic to distinguish between transient/expected errors and genuine failures
  3. Update processing summary to show warnings separately from failures
  4. Update tests to verify 404 handling behavior

• Estimated Effort: Small (2-4 hours)

• Dependencies: None

Historical Context

Comparison with Previous Audits

Yesterday (2026-01-21):

• Runs analyzed: 11
• Safe output jobs: 9
• Failures: 0
• Success rate: 100%
• Status: Perfect health ✅

Today (2026-01-22):

• Runs analyzed: 10
• Safe output jobs: 9
• Failures: 2
• Success rate: 77.78%
• Status: Minor issues (race condition errors) ⚠️

Trend Analysis:

• Consecutive days of perfect health: 0 (down from 2)
• Last failure: Today (2026-01-22)
• 7-day average success rate: 92.59%

The decrease in success rate is entirely due to race condition errors where discussion #11400 was deleted between agent execution and safe output job execution. This is an expected condition in distributed systems and doesn't indicate a regression in safe output job functionality.

Trends

• Error rate trend: Slight increase due to race condition errors (expected, not a regression)
• Most common recurring issue: None - first occurrence of this error pattern in recent audits
• Improvement since last audit: No regression - errors are due to external resource deletion, not system bugs

Metrics and KPIs

• Overall Safe Output Success Rate: 77.78% (partial failures counted as failures)
• Most Reliable Job Type: add_labels, create_issue, update_pull_request, push_to_pull_request_branch (100% success)
• Most Problematic Job Type: add_comment (88.89% success) - only due to race condition with deleted resources
• Average Operations Per Job: 2.9 operations
• Fault Tolerance: 100% - Jobs with partial failures still completed other operations successfully

Active Workflows in Period

The following workflows executed during the audit period:

• Smoke Claude (2 runs): Testing Claude agent with smoke test suite
• Smoke Copilot (2 runs): Testing Copilot agent with smoke test suite
• Smoke Codex (2 runs): Testing Codex agent with smoke test suite
• Changeset Generator (2 runs): Generating changelogs for PRs
• Code Scanning Fixer (1 run): Automated code security fixes
• Scout (1 run): Repository reconnaissance and analysis

Next Steps

• Document race condition pattern in error-patterns.json
• Update index.json with today's audit results
• Consider implementing 404 error downgrade to warning (low priority)
• Continue monitoring for systemic issues (none found today)
• Track if Oracle of Embered Circuits: The Smoke Test Augury #11400 deletion pattern repeats (may indicate smoke test cleanup issue)

Assessment

Overall Health: 🟢 Good

While the success rate dropped to 77.78%, this is entirely due to expected race conditions where a discussion was deleted between agent execution and safe output job execution. All other safe output operations completed successfully, and the partial failures did not prevent workflows from completing their primary objectives.

The safe output job infrastructure is functioning correctly. The errors identified are opportunities for improved error classification and handling, not indications of systemic problems.

References:

• §21268398422
• §21268398431
• §21268398447

AI generated by Safe Output Health Monitor

• expires on Jan 29, 2026, 11:30 PM UTC

[github-actions[bot]]

This discussion was automatically closed because it expired on 2026-01-29T23:30:36.812Z.