[lockfile-stats] Lockfile Statistics — 2026-09-29 (300 workflows analyzed)

[github-actions[bot]]

Lockfile Statistics — 2026-09-29

Analysis of all .github/workflows/*.lock.yml compiled workflow files in github/gh-aw, generated by a single-script compact-JSON analyzer (schema v4).

At a glance: 300 lockfiles · 44.9 MB total · 0 malformed/skipped · 0 unresolved engine/permission/discussion-category detections.

Executive summary

Metric	Value
Lockfile count	300
Total size	47,089,492 bytes (~44.9 MB)
Avg / min / max size	156,965 / 92,961 / 250,698 bytes
Workflows with workflow_dispatch	292 (97.3%)
Workflows creating discussions	92 (30.7%)
Engines resolved	300/300 (0 unknown)
Agent-job permissions resolved	300/300 (0 unknown)

File size distribution

• Avg 153 KB, ranging 91 KB–245 KB — a ~2.7x spread between smallest and largest compiled workflow, but no extreme outliers.

Trigger analysis

Trigger	Count	%
workflow_dispatch	292	97.3%
schedule	244	81.3%
pull_request	43	14.3%
issues	5	1.7%
issue_comment	3	1.0%
workflow_call	3	1.0%
deployment_status, workflow_run, discussion, discussion_comment, push, pull_request_review_comment	1 each	0.3%

Top trigger combinations: schedule+workflow_dispatch (211, 70.3%), workflow_dispatch alone (37), pull_request+schedule+workflow_dispatch (29), pull_request+workflow_dispatch (9).

Cron cadence: the dominant schedule is 0 0 */2 * * (every 2 days at midnight) — 43 workflows, far ahead of the next most common patterns (2–3 occurrences each).

Safe outputs analysis

Nearly universal safety scaffolding: noop, missing_data, missing_tool, and report_incomplete/create_report_incomplete_issue each appear in 294/300 workflows (98%).

Safe output type	Count
create_issue	146
create_discussion	92
add_comment	76
create_pull_request	65
push_repo_memory	40
add_labels	32
upload_asset	26
create_pull_request_review_comment / submit_pull_request_review	16 each
upload_artifact / create_check_run	14 each
push_to_pull_request_branch	11

Discussion categories (92 workflows, 92/92 resolved):

Category	Count
audits	79 (85.9%)
announcements	5
artifacts	2
dev	2
research	2
general	1
daily-news	1

Structural characteristics

Metric	Avg	Max
Jobs per workflow	7.36	14
Steps per workflow	146.28	210
Script (run:) steps per workflow	101.1	141

Permission patterns

Agent job (jobs.agent.permissions — the primary per-workflow scope, mirrors frontmatter):

Scope	read	write	none
contents	300	–	–
pull-requests	255	–	45
issues	260	–	40
actions	114	–	186
discussions	52	–	248
security-events	14	–	286
id-token	–	2	298
checks, deployments, packages, pages, repository-projects, statuses, attestations	≤1	≤1	~300

Every workflow's agent job has read-only (or none) contents — no agent job writes directly. Actual writes are isolated to dedicated safe-output jobs: the union of all jobs per workflow shows union_any_write_count = 300/300 — every single workflow has some job with write access somewhere (issues:write in all 300), confirming the safe-outputs security boundary (agent job read-only → separate writer job scoped to write) is applied consistently, not just in a subset.

Engine distribution

Engine	Count	%
copilot	125	41.7%
codex	74	24.7%
claude	56	18.7%
pi	31	10.3%
aider, goose	3 each	1.0%
opencode	2	0.7%
crush, cursor, deepseek-harness, gemini, kiro, pydantic-ai	1 each	0.3%

Top models: openai/gpt-5.3-codex (37), copilot/gpt-5.3-codex (34), copilot/auto (30), openai/gpt-5.4 (11), claude-sonnet-5 (6).

Tool & MCP patterns

MCP server	Workflows
safeoutputs	300 (100%)
github	177 (59%)
agenticworkflows	44
serena	25
mcpscripts	12
ledger	6
tavily	5
sentry	4

14 other servers (ast-grep, datadog, deepwiki, microsoftdocs, grafana, kreuzberg, mempalace, graft, agentdb, ruflo, ...) each appear in ≤2 workflows.

Interesting findings

1. Uniform safety scaffolding — 294/300 workflows (98%) carry the identical noop/missing_data/missing_tool/report_incomplete safe-output set, indicating a shared generator/template enforces this baseline rather than per-workflow authors adding it manually.
2. Engine mix is copilot-led but not monoculture — copilot (41.7%), codex (24.7%), and claude (18.7%) cover 85% of workflows; the remaining 15% splits across 9 other engines, mostly single-digit counts.
3. Strict read/write separation holds at 100% — every agent job is read-only on contents, yet every workflow has a write-capable job somewhere (union), which is exactly the intended safe-outputs isolation model with zero exceptions found.
4. Audit workflows dominate discussions — 86% of discussion-creating workflows target the audits category (this report included), suggesting the audits pipeline is now the primary consumer of create_discussion.
5. Schedule cadence has one dominant pattern — 0 0 */2 * * alone accounts for 43 workflows, more than 14x the next-most-common cron string, pointing to a shared "every-other-day" default rather than organic diversity in scheduling.

Historical trends (vs. 2026-09-27)

Metric	2026-09-27	2026-09-29	Δ
Lockfile count	298	300	+2
Total bytes	46,843,837	47,089,492	+245,655 (+0.52%)
Avg size	157,194.1	156,965.0	−229.1 (−0.15%)
workflow_dispatch count	290	292	+2
create_discussion workflows	92	92	0

Growth is incremental (+2 workflows) with flat average size — new workflows are in line with the existing size profile, not driving bloat.

Recommendations

• Audit the long tail of single-use MCP servers (kreuzberg, mempalace, graft, agentdb, ruflo, etc.) — confirm each is intentional rather than a leftover from a copied template.
• Spot-check the 2 workflows granting id-token: write and the few granting attestations/packages write to confirm OIDC/provenance use is deliberate.
• Keep enforcing the agent-job-read-only / writer-job-write-scoped pattern for any new workflow — it currently holds at 100% (300/300) and is worth protecting as the workflow count grows.
• Consider consolidating the 23 distinct low-count model overrides if they're not deliberate per-workflow experiments, to simplify cost tracking.

Methodology

Single-script compact JSON analysis: one Python pass over all .github/workflows/*.lock.yml files extracts engine metadata from the gh-aw-metadata header, MCP servers from the gh-aw-manifest header, safe-output config from GH_AW_SAFE_OUTPUTS_CONFIG, and per-job permissions from jobs.*.permissions (the top-level permissions: {} block carries no signal and was ignored). Self-checks confirmed 0/300 unresolved engines, 0/300 unresolved permissions, and 92/92 resolved discussion categories.

References:

• §36626206375

Generated by 📊 Lockfile Statistics Analysis Agent · claude · agent · 66.6 AIC · ⌖ 7.61 AIC · ⊞ 6.2K · ◷

• expires on Sep 30, 2026, 12:34 PM UTC-08:00

[github-actions[bot]]

This discussion was automatically closed because it expired on 2026-09-30T20:34:09.346Z.

Closed by Workflow