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Fix Daily Chronicle tone to attribute bot activity to humans#10302

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pelikhan merged 4 commits intomainfrom
copilot/fix-daily-chronicle-tone
Jan 16, 2026
Merged

Fix Daily Chronicle tone to attribute bot activity to humans#10302
pelikhan merged 4 commits intomainfrom
copilot/fix-daily-chronicle-tone

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Copilot AI commented Jan 16, 2026

The Daily Chronicle workflow was framing bot activity (@github-actions[bot], @copilot) as independent "takeovers" rather than recognizing these as tools triggered by human actors (issue assigners, reviewers, mergers).

Changes

Added "CRITICAL: Human Agency First" section with explicit attribution requirements:

  • Identify WHO triggered bot actions (assignees, reviewers, mergers, workflow triggers)
  • Correct framing: "Team leveraged Copilot to deliver 30 PRs..."
  • Incorrect framing: "Copilot bot staged a takeover..."

Updated editorial guidelines to emphasize human attribution:

  • Development Desk: Credit humans who assigned work, reviewed, and merged bot PRs
  • Commit Chronicles: Identify humans who initiated bot commits

Expanded writing style rules:

  • Human-centric: Attribute bot actions to triggering humans
  • Tools, not actors: Frame automation as productivity tools used BY developers
  • Avoid "robot uprising" tropes (no "bot takeovers", "automation armies")

Added technical requirement to identify human actors:

  • Check PR/issue assignees, reviewers, mergers
  • Examine workflow triggers and issue comments
  • Credit humans who configured, triggered, reviewed, or approved bot actions

Added human agency guidance to create-agentic-workflow template:

  • New section instructs workflow authors to attribute bot activity to humans when creating new workflows
  • Provides correct/incorrect framing examples for workflow creation
  • Emphasizes automation as productivity tools used BY humans, not independent actors
  • Especially important for reporting/summary workflows (daily reports, chronicles, team status updates)
  • Ensures future generated workflows include human agency considerations by default

Example transformation

Before:

The @Copilot bot staged an unprecedented takeover, flooding the codebase 
with 56 commits. The automation army dominated while human contributors 
looked on in awe and concern about their job security.

After:

Senior maintainers @alice and @bob leveraged GitHub Copilot to deliver 
30 pull requests, with @charlie reviewing and merging changes throughout 
the day. The team's strategic use of automation accelerated development 
while maintaining quality through human oversight.

Files modified

  • .github/workflows/daily-repo-chronicle.md (+52 lines of attribution guidance)
  • .github/workflows/daily-repo-chronicle.lock.yml (recompiled)
  • .github/aw/create-agentic-workflow.md (+8 lines of human agency guidance)
  • pkg/cli/templates/create-agentic-workflow.md (+8 lines, auto-synced)
Original prompt

This section details on the original issue you should resolve

<issue_title>Daily Chronicle tone not right on bots</issue_title>
<issue_description>Daily Chronicle telling me I'm soon to be obsolete :cry-baby:

Meanwhile, human developer @dsyme made a valiant appearance with a series of "improve workflows" commits (98fdfcc, 77109a2), proving that flesh-and-blood programmers haven't been completely displaced by their silicon counterparts - yet.

#10106

In fact we're all toast with the machine invasion, according to the machines:

In what can only be described as a mechanical marvel, the @copilot bot staged an unprecedented takeover of the githubnext/gh-aw repository in the past 24 hours, flooding the codebase with a staggering 56 commits and 30 pull requests. The automation army, led by the tireless @github-actions[bot] and its silicon sidekick @copilot, dominated the development landscape while human contributors looked on in a mixture of awe and mild concern about their job security.

We have to improve the tone and causality here. @github-actions[bot] and @copilot are both triggered by human action (assigning issues, planning, etc), and their action should be attributed to humans that triggered, reviewed, merged, controlled these bots. It can be mentioned that use of bots was involved, but the reasoning when writing the chronicle should be adjusted to always talk about human agency, except where true automated principals are involved.

</issue_description>

Comments on the Issue (you are @copilot in this section)


✨ Let Copilot coding agent set things up for you — coding agent works faster and does higher quality work when set up for your repo.

Copilot AI changed the title [WIP] Fix tone of Daily Chronicle bot messages Fix Daily Chronicle tone to attribute bot activity to humans Jan 16, 2026
@pelikhan
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@copilot add section about this topic in the create-agentic-workflows.md prompt to provide guidance for future generated agentic workflows

@pelikhan
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@dsyme also tweaking the generator to implement this

Co-authored-by: pelikhan <4175913+pelikhan@users.noreply.github.com>
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Copilot AI commented Jan 16, 2026

@copilot add section about this topic in the create-agentic-workflows.md prompt to provide guidance for future generated agentic workflows

Added human agency guidance to the create-agentic-workflow template in commit d7086ef.

The new section instructs workflow authors to:

  • Attribute bot activity (@github-actions[bot], @copilot) to the humans who triggered them
  • Check PR/issue assignees, reviewers, mergers, and workflow triggers to credit humans
  • Use correct framing: "The team leveraged Copilot..." vs incorrect: "The Copilot bot staged a takeover..."
  • Present automation as productivity tools used BY humans, not independent actors

This guidance is now part of the workflow creation template and will be included in future generated workflows, especially reporting/summary workflows.

Copilot AI requested a review from pelikhan January 16, 2026 14:57
@pelikhan pelikhan marked this pull request as ready for review January 16, 2026 15:01
@pelikhan pelikhan merged commit 372aab7 into main Jan 16, 2026
@pelikhan pelikhan deleted the copilot/fix-daily-chronicle-tone branch January 16, 2026 15:01
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Daily Chronicle tone not right on bots

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