[deep-report] Fix 51 uppercase-starting error strings across pkg/ (Go convention violation)

[github-actions]

Description

The 2026-08-05 Repository Quality Improvement Report found 51 error strings in pkg/ (26 fmt.Errorf, 25 errors.New) that start with an uppercase letter, violating Go's error-string convention (lowercase, no trailing punctuation) and the repo's own error-messages style guide. Concentrated examples include pkg/workflow/awf_config.go:124, pkg/cli/mcp_registry.go:99-107 (5 occurrences in a 10-line span), and pkg/cli/pr_helpers.go:20.

Expected Impact

Mechanical, low-risk cleanup that brings ~51 call sites into Go convention compliance and improves consistency when these errors are wrapped by callers.

Suggested Agent

General-purpose engineering agent — a repeatable pattern ("any string literal passed to errors.New/fmt.Errorf starting uppercase → lowercase first rune") makes this a good candidate for a scripted/codemod pass followed by manual review of the diff.

Estimated Effort

Quick (< 1 hour) for the mechanical fix; add a short review pass to confirm no strings are user-facing proper nouns that should stay capitalized.

Data Source

DeepReport Intelligence Briefing analysis, 2026-08-05, sourced from Repository Quality Improvement Report — Error Message Actionability & Consistency.

Generated by 🔬 Deep Report · agent · 160.4 AIC · ⌖ 36.9 AIC · ⊞ 11K · ◷

• expires on Aug 7, 2026, 7:34 AM UTC-08:00

[luisangelrod]

I checked the named hotspots on current main and did not find an open PR for this issue. One implementation detail is worth preserving: this should not be a blind first-rune lowercasing pass, because several messages begin with proper names or acronyms (GitHub, MCP, AWF). Rephrasing those messages keeps the names correct while satisfying Go's error-string convention.

Suggested handling for the concentrated cases:

• pkg/cli/mcp_registry.go:99-107: use starts such as access to the MCP registry is forbidden, authentication with the MCP registry is unauthorized, the MCP registry endpoint was not found, the MCP registry rate limit was exceeded, and the MCP registry returned status ....
• pkg/workflow/awf_config.go:124: validation of the AWF config schema failed: %w.
• pkg/workflow/schema_validation.go:108: validation against the GitHub Actions schema failed: %w.
• pkg/cli/forecast_resolution.go:149: the GitHub API rate limit was exhausted after %d attempts: %w.
• pkg/cli/mcp_validation.go:85,99,111: start with a GitHub token is required ....
• pkg/cli/pr_helpers.go:20, pkg/cli/run_workflow_execution.go:88, and pkg/cli/enable.go:73: start with the GitHub CLI (gh) is required ....

For the remaining call sites, a mechanical lowercase change should be safe only where the first word is ordinary prose. I would use this scan as the completion check, excluding tests from the production-source count:

rg -n '(fmt\.Errorf|errors\.New)\("[A-Z]' pkg --glob '*.go' --glob '!*_test.go'

After the edits, I would search for exact-message assertions and update only those affected, then run:

make fmt
make lint-errors
go test ./pkg/cli ./pkg/workflow
make agent-finish

This keeps the change narrowly scoped to error text and lets the existing error-message lint act as the regression check.

[github-actions]

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If assignment succeeds, the Copilot coding agent will analyze the issue and create a pull request with the fix.

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