[daily secrets] Daily Secrets Analysis Report - January 24, 2026

[github-actions[bot]]

Date: 2026-01-24
Workflow Files Analyzed: 140
Run: §21313075025

📊 Executive Summary

Analyzed all compiled workflow files for secret usage patterns, security posture, and compliance with best practices.

Key Metrics:

• Total Secret References: 4,426 instances across all workflows
• Unique Secret Types: 24 distinct secrets
• GitHub Token References: 295 direct github.token references
• Security Coverage: 100% (all workflows have redaction)

Distribution:

• Job-Level Secret Usage: 0 (0%)
• Step-Level Secret Usage: 1,734 (100%)

🔑 Top 10 Secrets by Usage

Rank	Secret Name	Occurrences	Category
1	GITHUB_TOKEN	1,443	GitHub Token
2	GH_AW_GITHUB_TOKEN	1,264	GitHub Token (Custom)
3	GH_AW_GITHUB_MCP_SERVER_TOKEN	700	GitHub MCP Token
4	COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN	440	GitHub Copilot Token
5	ANTHROPIC_API_KEY	185	AI API Key (Claude)
6	CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN	185	AI OAuth Token
7	OPENAI_API_KEY	64	AI API Key (OpenAI)
8	CODEX_API_KEY	64	AI API Key (Codex)
9	TAVILY_API_KEY	19	Search API Key
10	NOTION_API_TOKEN	8	Integration Token

View All 24 Secret Types

GitHub Authentication Tokens (3,856 total):

• GITHUB_TOKEN: 1,443
• GH_AW_GITHUB_TOKEN: 1,264
• GH_AW_GITHUB_MCP_SERVER_TOKEN: 700
• COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN: 440
• GH_AW_PROJECT_GITHUB_TOKEN: 6
• GH_AW_AGENT_TOKEN: 3

AI/ML API Keys (498 total):

• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: 185
• CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN: 185
• OPENAI_API_KEY: 64
• CODEX_API_KEY: 64

Third-Party Integrations (72 total):

• TAVILY_API_KEY: 19
• NOTION_API_TOKEN: 8
• APP_PRIVATE_KEY: 8
• CONTEXT7_API_KEY: 6
• BRAVE_API_KEY: 6
• SENTRY_OPENAI_API_KEY: 3
• SENTRY_ACCESS_TOKEN: 3
• DD_SITE: 3
• DD_APPLICATION_KEY: 3
• DD_API_KEY: 3

🛡️ Security Posture

✅ Excellent Security Coverage

Redaction System:

• Coverage: 140/140 workflows (100%)
• Status: ✅ All workflows implement secret redaction
• Implementation: Uses redact_secrets.cjs to sanitize logs

Token Security Patterns:

• Cascade Fallbacks: 563 instances of token fallback chains
• Pattern: GH_AW_GITHUB_MCP_SERVER_TOKEN || GH_AW_GITHUB_TOKEN || GITHUB_TOKEN
• Benefit: Ensures workflows have authentication while respecting priority

Permission Controls:

• Explicit Permissions: 140/140 workflows (100%)
• Read-Only Contents: 636 instances of contents: read
• Principle: Least privilege access by default

🔍 Security Checks Performed

Template Injection Analysis

github.event. Usage:*

• Total References: 1,775 instances
• Context: Used for workflow triggers and event data
• Risk Assessment: ✅ Low - All instances are within safe contexts (conditionals, environment variables)
• Mitigation: Expressions are properly scoped and not directly interpolated into commands

Secret Exposure Analysis

Secrets in Job Outputs:

• Instances Found: 0
• Status: ✅ No secrets exposed in job outputs
• Verification: Searched for secrets.* within output blocks

Secret Logging:

• Protection: All workflows use redaction steps
• Implementation: GitHub Actions native secret masking + custom redaction
• Coverage: 100%

📈 Workflow Distribution Analysis

Top 10 Workflows by Secret Usage:

Workflow	Secret Count	Primary Purpose
mcp-inspector.lock.yml	70	MCP server inspection
daily-news.lock.yml	52	Daily news aggregation
smoke-codex.lock.yml	48	Codex engine testing
deep-report.lock.yml	44	Deep analysis reports
smoke-claude.lock.yml	43	Claude engine testing
daily-observability-report.lock.yml	43	Observability monitoring
daily-issues-report.lock.yml	43	Issues tracking
agentic-campaign-generator.lock.yml	43	Campaign generation
scout.lock.yml	42	Repository scouting
prompt-clustering-analysis.lock.yml	42	Prompt analysis

🎯 Key Findings

1. Universal Security Adoption: 100% of workflows implement both secret redaction and explicit permissions - excellent security posture.

2. Intelligent Fallback Strategy: All 140 workflows use token cascade patterns, ensuring resilience while maintaining security hierarchy.

3. Step-Level Secret Scoping: All secrets are scoped at the step level (0% job-level), providing better isolation and reducing exposure surface.

4. GitHub Token Dominance: GitHub authentication tokens represent 87% of all secret usage (3,856/4,426), reflecting the repository's GitHub-centric operations.

5. Multi-Engine AI Support: The repository uses 4 different AI API key types (Anthropic, OpenAI, Codex, Claude OAuth), demonstrating flexible AI engine integration.

6. Zero Secret Exposure: No instances of secrets in job outputs or unsafe interpolation patterns detected.

💡 Recommendations

✅ Current Strengths to Maintain:

1. Continue 100% redaction coverage - This is a critical security control that prevents accidental secret leakage in logs.

2. Maintain token cascade patterns - The fallback chain provides excellent resilience without compromising security.

3. Keep step-level secret scoping - Current practice of scoping secrets at step level minimizes exposure and follows least-privilege principles.

🔄 Potential Improvements:

1. Secret Consolidation Analysis: With 24 unique secret types, consider auditing whether all are still necessary. Focus on:

   • Low-usage secrets (< 10 occurrences)
   • Deprecated integration tokens
   • Duplicate authentication patterns

2. Token Usage Documentation: The mcp-inspector workflow uses 70 secrets - document why this workflow requires more authentication than others.

3. Third-Party API Key Rotation: Implement automated rotation schedules for third-party integration tokens (Tavily, Notion, Context7, etc.).

4. Secret Usage Trend Tracking: Establish baseline metrics for tomorrow's report to identify:

   • New secrets being added
   • Deprecated secrets still in use
   • Unusual usage pattern changes

📖 Reference Documentation

For detailed information about secret usage patterns:

• Specification: specs/secrets-yml.md
• Redaction Implementation: actions/setup/js/redact_secrets.cjs
• Security Best Practices: GitHub Actions Security Hardening

Related Workflows:

• This analysis is generated by: .github/workflows/daily-secrets.md
• Expires after: 3 days (auto-cleanup of older discussions)

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Next Report: 2026-01-25 (automated daily at 00:00 UTC)
Retention: This discussion will be automatically closed after 3 days

AI generated by Daily Secrets Analysis Agent

• expires on Jan 27, 2026, 9:43 AM UTC

[github-actions[bot]]

This discussion was automatically closed because it expired on 2026-01-27T09:43:00.652Z.