Skip to content

Increase MCP gateway health check timeout from 120s to 240s#9901

Closed
Copilot wants to merge 2 commits intomainfrom
copilot/fix-daily-news-workflow-timeout
Closed

Increase MCP gateway health check timeout from 120s to 240s#9901
Copilot wants to merge 2 commits intomainfrom
copilot/fix-daily-news-workflow-timeout

Conversation

Copy link
Contributor

Copilot AI commented Jan 14, 2026 •
edited
Loading

Daily News workflow failing 50% of runs since Jan 9 with exit code 7 (timeout) during MCP gateway startup. Gateway initialization requires starting multiple Docker containers (GitHub MCP server, safe-outputs) with API authentication, which exceeds the hardcoded 120s timeout during peak times or network latency.

Changes

  • actions/setup/sh/start_mcp_gateway.sh: Timeout 120s → 240s, configurable via MCP_GATEWAY_HEALTH_TIMEOUT_SECONDS
  • actions/setup/sh/verify_mcp_gateway_health.sh: Same timeout increase and configurability
# Default: 240s
HEALTH_TIMEOUT_SECONDS="${MCP_GATEWAY_HEALTH_TIMEOUT_SECONDS:-240}"

# Override if needed:
env:
  MCP_GATEWAY_HEALTH_TIMEOUT_SECONDS: 300

Impact

  • No recompilation needed (scripts are runtime-copied, not embedded)
  • Backward compatible (all workflows benefit immediately)
  • Workflow-level timeout remains 30 minutes (unchanged)
Original prompt

This section details on the original issue you should resolve

<issue_title>[P1] Daily News Workflow Timeout Failures - 50% Success Rate</issue_title>
<issue_description># 🚨 High Priority: Daily News Workflow Timeout Failures

Summary

The Daily News workflow has degraded to 50% success rate (10/20 runs) with consistent timeout failures starting January 9, 2026. Users are not receiving daily repository news updates reliably.

Error Details

Sample Failed Run

Recent Run History

Run githubnext/gh-aw#101 (2026-01-13): failure
Run githubnext/gh-aw#100 (2026-01-12): failure
Run githubnext/gh-aw#99  (2026-01-09): failure
Run githubnext/gh-aw#98  (2026-01-08): success ✓
Run githubnext/gh-aw#97  (2026-01-07): success ✓
Run githubnext/gh-aw#96  (2026-01-06): success ✓
Run githubnext/gh-aw#95  (2026-01-05): success ✓

Suspected Root Causes

  1. Network/API Latency: Increased response times from external services
  2. Rate Limiting: GitHub API or external news sources throttling requests
  3. Resource Contention: Runner experiencing performance issues
  4. Timeout Configuration: 120s limit may be insufficient for peak times

Part of Systemic Pattern

  • Similar timeout pattern seen in CI Doctor workflow (0% success)
  • Both workflows started failing around same time (2026-01-09)
  • Both showing exit code 7 timeout errors
  • Suggests system-wide issue, not workflow-specific

Recommended Actions

Immediate (P1)

  1. Analyze Slow Operations

    • Identify which operations exceed timeout
    • Profile workflow execution time
    • Check for external API dependencies

  2. Review Timeout Configuration

    • Consider increasing timeout limit
    • Add timeout parameters to individual steps
    • Implement better retry logic

  3. Optimize Performance

    • Cache frequently accessed data
    • Parallelize independent operations
    • Reduce API call frequency if possible

Follow-up

  1. Add better logging/observability
  2. Implement timeout monitoring/alerting
  3. Create fallback mechanism for news aggregation
  4. Document performance baselines

Impact Assessment

  • User Impact: Inconsistent daily updates
  • Frequency: Daily scheduled workflow
  • Severity: High - affects user experience
  • Pattern: Part of larger timeout epidemic

Related Issues

  • CI Doctor workflow (P0) - same timeout pattern
  • Systemic timeout investigation needed
  • May affect other scheduled workflows

Detection

Identified by Workflow Health Manager on 2026-01-14
Health Score Impact: -5 points (75/100 overall)

Labels: workflow-health, priority-p1, type-failure, timeout
Related: CI Doctor timeout issue, systemic performance investigation

AI generated by Workflow Health Manager - Meta-Orchestrator

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

💡 You can make Copilot smarter by setting up custom instructions, customizing its development environment and configuring Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. Learn more Copilot coding agent tips in the docs.

@mnkiefer
Increase MCP gateway health check timeout from 120s to 240s
d7c5135 
Co-authored-by: mnkiefer <8320933+mnkiefer@users.noreply.github.com>
Copilot AI changed the title [WIP] Fix timeout failures in daily news workflow Increase MCP gateway health check timeout from 120s to 240s Jan 14, 2026
Copilot AI requested a review from mnkiefer January 14, 2026 03:41
@pelikhan pelikhan closed this Jan 14, 2026
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Reviewers

@mnkiefer mnkiefer Awaiting requested review from mnkiefer

Assignees

@mnkiefer mnkiefer

Copilot code review Copilot

Labels

None yet

Projects

None yet

Milestone

No milestone

Development

Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.

[P1] Daily News Workflow Timeout Failures - 50% Success Rate

3 participants

@pelikhan @mnkiefer