[delight] User Experience Analysis Report - 2026-09-07

[github-actions[bot]]

Executive Summary

Today's analysis focused on:

• 2 documentation files
• 2 workflow message configurations
• 1 validation file

Overall Quality: Generally professional and well-organized, with one clear opportunity to make troubleshooting guidance more actionable.

Key Finding: The "Common issues" troubleshooting section in docs/src/content/docs/experimental/trial-ops.md lists symptoms and one-line fixes that are too terse to be genuinely actionable for users encountering these errors for the first time.

Quality Highlights ✅

Example 1: Well-structured trial result documentation

• File: docs/src/content/docs/experimental/trial-ops.md
• What works well: The "Understanding Trial Results" section provides a complete, realistic JSON example with success, safe_output_errors, and safe_outputs fields, followed by a clear prose explanation of what success and safe_output_errors mean for exit codes. This is a great example of concrete, practical documentation.
• Quote/Reference: "success provides an explicit pass/fail signal for each workflow result. When safe-output processing rejects one or more requested actions, safe_output_errors contains the rejected-message errors and gh aw trial exits non-zero instead of reporting unconditional success."

Example 2: Clear, actionable validation error messages

• File: pkg/workflow/model_alias_validation.go
• What works well: ValidateEffortParam and ValidateTemperatureParam produce errors that name the exact parameter, the invalid value, the allowed range/values, and reference a rule ID (e.g., V-MAF-002) for traceability — an excellent enterprise pattern.
• Quote/Reference: "model parameter 'temperature': value %q is out of range; must be in [0.0, 2.0] (V-MAF-003)"

Improvement Opportunities 💡

High Priority

Opportunity 1: Expand terse troubleshooting bullets - Single File Improvement

• File: docs/src/content/docs/experimental/trial-ops.md
• Current State: Lines ~133-136, the "Common issues" section:

  - **Workflow dispatch failed** - Add `workflow_dispatch` trigger
  - **No safe outputs** - Configure safe outputs in workflow
  - **Permission errors** - Verify API keys
  - **Timeout** - Use `--timeout 60` (minutes)
  

• Issue: Each bullet names a symptom and a one-line imperative fix with no context on why the error occurs, where to make the change, or what the exact expected result looks like. A user hitting "Permission errors" doesn't know which API keys, environment variables, or GitHub secrets are relevant.
• User Impact: Enterprise users triaging a failed trial run must search elsewhere (source code, other docs, or trial-and-error) to resolve these issues, undermining the "efficient troubleshooting" goal of a troubleshooting section.
• Suggested Change: Expand each bullet into 1-2 sentences that state the root cause and the concrete fix location (e.g., which frontmatter field, which secret name, which CLI flag), matching the specificity already demonstrated elsewhere in this same file (e.g., the JSON result explanation).
• Design Principle: Documentation Quality — "Complete and accurate" and "Practical examples that reflect real use cases."

Medium Priority

Opportunity 2: Minor formatting inconsistency in code comments

• File: docs/src/content/docs/experimental/trial-ops.md
• Current State: Lines 96-97:

  gh aw trial ./my-workflow.md --delete-host-repo-after        # Delete after completion
  gh aw trial ./my-workflow.md --delete-host-repo-before # Clean slate before running
  

• Issue: Inconsistent whitespace alignment between the two inline comments (extra spaces on the first line, none on the second) creates visual noise in an otherwise clean code block.
• User Impact: Minor, but inconsistent formatting in official docs can look unpolished to enterprise readers who expect precision.
• Suggested Change: Align both comments with a single space before # for consistency.
• Design Principle: Professional Communication — visual/formatting consistency.

Files Reviewed

Documentation

• docs/src/content/docs/experimental/trial-ops.md - Rating: ⚠️ Needs Minor Work
• docs/src/content/docs/gallery/docs-automation.md - Rating: ✅ Professional

Workflow Messages

• .github/workflows/pdf-summary.md - Rating: ✅ Professional
• .github/workflows/q.md - Rating: ✅ Professional

Validation Code

• pkg/workflow/model_alias_validation.go - Rating: ✅ Professional

Metrics

• Files Analyzed: 5
• Quality Distribution:
  • ✅ Professional: 4
  • ⚠️ Needs Minor Work: 1
  • ❌ Needs Significant Work: 0

🎯 Actionable Tasks

Here is 1 targeted improvement task, affecting a single file:

Task 1: Improve troubleshooting guidance - trial-ops.md

File to Modify: docs/src/content/docs/experimental/trial-ops.md

Current Experience

The "Common issues" section under "Understanding Trial Results" lists four symptoms with terse one-line fixes that lack context on root cause or exact resolution steps.

Quality Issue

Design Principle: Documentation Quality (Complete and accurate) / Trust and Reliability (actionable error guidance)

Users encountering a failed trial run need to know why the error happens and exactly where to make a fix (which frontmatter field, secret name, or CLI flag), not just a terse imperative.

Proposed Improvement

Expand each bullet to include root cause and precise fix location, consistent with the specificity used elsewhere in the same document (e.g., the JSON result field explanations).

Before:

**Common issues:**

- **Workflow dispatch failed** - Add `workflow_dispatch` trigger
- **No safe outputs** - Configure safe outputs in workflow
- **Permission errors** - Verify API keys
- **Timeout** - Use `--timeout 60` (minutes)

After:

**Common issues:**

- **Workflow dispatch failed** - The workflow doesn't support `workflow_dispatch`. Add an `on: workflow_dispatch:` trigger to the workflow's frontmatter so `gh aw trial` can invoke it directly.
- **No safe outputs** - The workflow produced no issues, PRs, or comments to report. Confirm the workflow's frontmatter includes a `safe-outputs:` section (e.g., `create-issue`, `add-comment`) matching the behavior you expect to observe.
- **Permission errors** - The trial repository lacks required API access. Verify that any secrets referenced by the workflow (e.g., `GITHUB_TOKEN`, custom API keys) are available in the trial repo, or pass them via `--secret KEY=VALUE`.
- **Timeout** - The workflow exceeded its execution window. Increase the limit with `gh aw trial ... --timeout 60` (minutes), or check the workflow's own `timeout-minutes` frontmatter setting.

Why This Matters

• User Impact: Reduces time-to-resolution for common trial failures without requiring users to consult source code or other docs.
• Quality Factor: Documentation completeness and actionability.
• Frequency: TrialOps is the primary workflow-testing tool; troubleshooting guidance is consulted whenever a trial fails.

Success Criteria

• Changes made to docs/src/content/docs/experimental/trial-ops.md only
• Each bullet in "Common issues" explains root cause and exact fix location
• Quality rating improves from ⚠️ Needs Minor Work to ✅ Professional

Scope Constraint

• Single file only: docs/src/content/docs/experimental/trial-ops.md
• No changes to other files required
• Can be completed independently

📊 User experience analysis by Delight · copilot · auto · 25.2 AIC · ⌖ 9.44 AIC · ⊞ 12.3K · ◷

• expires on Sep 10, 2026, 6:51 AM UTC-08:00

[github-actions[bot]]

This discussion was automatically closed because it expired on 2026-09-10T14:51:48.393Z.

Closed by Workflow