[safe-output-health] Safe Output Health Monitor - 2026-08-25: 3 Process Safe Outputs failures (PR Sous Chef 4th recurrence plus 2 new cross-workflow

[github-actions[bot]]

Executive Summary

Audit of safe-output job (safe_outputs) executions across the last ~24h of pre-downloaded workflow run logs (2026-08-24 ~04:40Z through 2026-08-25 ~04:31Z). Found 278 safe_outputs job executions (locally cached run_summary.json files containing a "Process Safe Outputs" step), of which 3 failed — a 98.92% success rate. All 3 failures share the identical signature: the safe_outputs job has its **"Process Safe Outputs" step fail, while the subsequent "Upload Safe Outputs Items" step (which runs unconditionally) still succeeds. This is the 4th occurrence of a known recurring PR Sous Chef failure, plus 2 new occurrences of the same step-name failure in different workflows with much simpler safe-output configs — which weakens the existing "large/varied batch" hypothesis and raises a new, unconfirmed hypothesis of a possible shared regression in the underlying process_safe_outputs.cjs script.

Data-gap disclosure: no raw stderr/exception text is retrievable for any of the 3 failures in this environment (confirmed via run_summary.json, single-run agenticworkflows audit, and artifact download — there is no safe_outputs artifact set). All root-cause statements below are therefore hypotheses grounded in step-level pass/fail + config data, not confirmed by log evidence. This gap is itself the top recommendation.

Safe Output Job Statistics

Metric	Value
safe_outputs job executions analyzed	278
Failures	3
Successes	275
Success rate	98.92%
Failing step (all 3)	"Process Safe Outputs"
Workflows affected	PR Sous Chef, Designer Drift Audit, Design Decision Gate

Error Clusters

Cluster 1 — PR Sous Chef recurring batch-abort (confirmed_recurring, 4th occurrence)

• Run 32774702076, created 2026-08-24T20:34:59Z, event schedule.
• Safe-output config: add_comment (max 4), create_issue (max 1), push_to_pull_request_branch (max 10).
• Previously seen 2026-08-22 (runs 32526302837, 32543132845) and 2026-08-23 (run 32606608661). Trend: flat_unresolved.

Cluster 2 — New cross-workflow occurrences of the same step-name failure (new, 2 occurrences today)

• Run 32806961518 — Designer Drift Audit, created 2026-08-25T03:55:07Z, schedule. Config: create_issue only (max 1, close_older_issues: true).
• Run 32766584101 — Design Decision Gate, created 2026-08-24T19:10:02Z, pull_request. Config: add_comment (max 2) + push_to_pull_request_branch.
• No safe-output type is common to both, and neither resembles the PR Sous Chef large/varied batch — this cluster does not fit the existing recurring-pattern hypothesis.

Historical context / trend detail

Audit date	Runs analyzed	Failures	Success rate	Primary finding
2026-08-22	841	2	99.45%	PR Sous Chef "Process Safe Outputs" failed 2/24 sampled runs
2026-08-23	224	2	98.94%	3rd PR Sous Chef recurrence + 1 new infra-flake ("Checkout actions folder")
2026-08-24	-	-	-	No audit entry found in history — possible process gap, flagged for follow-up
2026-08-25 (today)	278	3	98.92%	4th PR Sous Chef recurrence + first cross-workflow occurrences

Note: the 2026-08-25 "runs analyzed" figure uses a different counting methodology (local cache file count) than prior days agenticworkflows logs sampling, so success-rate trend should be read directionally, not as an exact time series.

Root Cause Analysis

• PR Sous Chef (Cluster 1): unresolved since 2026-08-21. Working hypothesis (unchanged, still unconfirmed): the workflow emits a large/varied batch of safe-output items per run (add-comment, approve-workflow-run, resolve-pull-request-review-thread, dismiss-pull-request-review, update-pull-request, push-to-pull-request-branch, create-issue), and one malformed item likely aborts the whole batch instead of failing just that item.
• Cluster 2 (new): the same failure signature appearing in workflows with a single, simple safe-output type (Designer Drift Audit: create_issue only) directly contradicts the "large/varied batch" theory as a universal explanation. This is presented as an open, unconfirmed hypothesis: a possible shared regression in process_safe_outputs.cjs (or its setup_globals.cjs dependency) affecting multiple workflows in the 2026-08-24T19:10Z to 2026-08-25T04:00Z window, rather than a per-workflow data issue. This has not been proven — it is inferred solely from the coincidence of step name and timing, and needs confirmation over the next 1-2 audits before being treated as recurring.

Recommendations

Immediate action (elevated priority this audit):

• Add stderr/stdout capture for the "Process Safe Outputs" step, uploaded as a build artifact (similar to the existing unconditional "Upload Safe Outputs Items" step). This is the single highest-leverage fix: it has now blocked root-causing 3 failures across 2 audit days and 3 workflows, and no other tool in this environment can retrieve that text (run_summary.json has no error field, agenticworkflows audit gives only meta-findings, and no safe_outputs artifact set exists).

Bug fix (existing, still open):

• For PR Sous Chef specifically: make "Process Safe Outputs" isolate errors per safe-output item (try/catch per item) instead of aborting the entire batch on one bad item.

Process improvement:

• Investigate/confirm whether a 2026-08-24 audit ran and was simply not recorded to index.json, or did not run at all — this is a gap in the audit trail continuity.

Work Item Plans

1. [Infra] Add per-step log/artifact capture for "Process Safe Outputs" — modify the compiled lock.yml template so this step output is written to a file and uploaded unconditionally. Unblocks root-causing all 3 open patterns above. Owner: gh-aw core/tooling maintainers.
2. [Bug] Per-item error isolation in process_safe_outputs.cjs — scoped to the PR Sous Chef recurring failure; ref reduce-batch-size-or-per-item-isolation in cache-memory solutions.
3. [Investigate] Confirm scope of cross-workflow "Process Safe Outputs" failures — once (1) lands, re-examine Designer Drift Audit and Design Decision Gate failures with real stderr to confirm or refute the shared-regression hypothesis.
4. [Process] Confirm/backfill 2026-08-24 audit gap in the safe-output-health cache-memory history.

Metrics / KPIs

• Success rate this audit: 98.92% (275/278), down slightly from 98.94% (2026-08-23) and 99.45% (2026-08-22) — directional, not statistically significant given differing sampling methodology.
• Recurring-pattern count: 1 confirmed_recurring (4 occurrences), 1 new_hypothesis (2 occurrences, 1 audit day).
• 100% of failures this audit (3/3) are the same step name ("Process Safe Outputs"), 0 new distinct step-failure types.

Next Steps

• File/track work items 1-4 above.
• Re-run this audit tomorrow (2026-08-26) and check whether Cluster 2 recurs — that is the deciding data point for the shared-regression hypothesis.
• No missing_tool gap beyond the already-known artifact-set limitation (recorded in cache-memory error-patterns.json); no missing_data beyond the stated evidence gaps above.

References:

• 32774702076 — PR Sous Chef, 4th recurrence
• 32806961518 — Designer Drift Audit, new occurrence
• 32766584101 — Design Decision Gate, new occurrence

Generated by 🔒 Safe Output Health Monitor · claude · agent · 305.5 AIC · ⌖ 8.4 AIC · ⊞ 10.8K · ◷

• expires on Aug 25, 2026, 8:57 PM UTC-08:00