[P1] Daily News Workflow Timeout Failures - 50% Success Rate

[github-actions]

🚨 High Priority: Daily News Workflow Timeout Failures

Summary

The Daily News workflow has degraded to 50% success rate (10/20 runs) with consistent timeout failures starting January 9, 2026. Users are not receiving daily repository news updates reliably.

Error Details

• Error Pattern: Exit code 7 (timeout after 120 seconds)
• Success Rate: 50% (was 100% before 2026-01-09)
• Failure Pattern: Intermittent failures since Jan 9
• Last Failure: Run Implement goccy/go-yaml with line offset support for frontmatter error reporting #101 (2026-01-13)
• Impact: Inconsistent daily news delivery to users

Sample Failed Run

• Run: https://github.com/githubnext/gh-aw/actions/runs/20951135921
• Date: 2026-01-13
• Error: Process completed with exit code 7
• Logs: "Retrying up to 120 times with 1s delay (120s total timeout)"

Recent Run History

Run #101 (2026-01-13): failure
Run #100 (2026-01-12): failure
Run #99  (2026-01-09): failure
Run #98  (2026-01-08): success ✓
Run #97  (2026-01-07): success ✓
Run #96  (2026-01-06): success ✓
Run #95  (2026-01-05): success ✓

Suspected Root Causes

1. Network/API Latency: Increased response times from external services
2. Rate Limiting: GitHub API or external news sources throttling requests
3. Resource Contention: Runner experiencing performance issues
4. Timeout Configuration: 120s limit may be insufficient for peak times

Part of Systemic Pattern

• Similar timeout pattern seen in CI Doctor workflow (0% success)
• Both workflows started failing around same time (2026-01-09)
• Both showing exit code 7 timeout errors
• Suggests system-wide issue, not workflow-specific

Recommended Actions

Immediate (P1)

1. Analyze Slow Operations

   • Identify which operations exceed timeout
   • Profile workflow execution time
   • Check for external API dependencies

2. Review Timeout Configuration

   • Consider increasing timeout limit
   • Add timeout parameters to individual steps
   • Implement better retry logic

3. Optimize Performance

   • Cache frequently accessed data
   • Parallelize independent operations
   • Reduce API call frequency if possible

Follow-up

1. Add better logging/observability
2. Implement timeout monitoring/alerting
3. Create fallback mechanism for news aggregation
4. Document performance baselines

Impact Assessment

• User Impact: Inconsistent daily updates
• Frequency: Daily scheduled workflow
• Severity: High - affects user experience
• Pattern: Part of larger timeout epidemic

Related Issues

• CI Doctor workflow (P0) - same timeout pattern
• Systemic timeout investigation needed
• May affect other scheduled workflows

Detection

Identified by Workflow Health Manager on 2026-01-14
Health Score Impact: -5 points (75/100 overall)

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Labels: workflow-health, priority-p1, type-failure, timeout
Related: CI Doctor timeout issue, systemic performance investigation

AI generated by Workflow Health Manager - Meta-Orchestrator

[github-actions]

This issue was automatically closed because it expired on 2026-01-15T03:00:44.150Z.

[github-actions]

🎯 Root Cause Identified!

Problem

Daily News workflow has been failing with 9 consecutive failures since 2026-01-08 (10% success rate).

Root Cause Discovered

Missing environment variable: TAVILY_API_KEY

From most recent failure (Run #107, 2026-01-19), step 31 "Start MCP gateway":

Error: failed to load config: Configuration error at mcpServers.tavily.env.TAVILY_API_KEY: 
undefined environment variable referenced: TAVILY_API_KEY

Suggestion: Set the environment variable TAVILY_API_KEY before starting the gateway

Why This Is Different

• Agent Performance Analyzer and Metrics Collector recovered from MCP Gateway schema issues
• Daily News has a missing secret issue, not a schema problem
• Both started failing around the same time (2026-01-09), but different root causes

Solution Options

Option 1: Add Secret (Recommended)

1. Obtain Tavily API key from https://tavily.com
2. Add TAVILY_API_KEY secret to repository settings
3. Update Daily News workflow to reference secret (if not already configured)
4. Test with manual workflow run
5. Expected resolution: Immediate (once secret added)

Option 2: Remove Tavily Dependency

1. Update Daily News workflow (daily-news.md) to remove Tavily MCP server from tools configuration
2. Recompile workflow: make recompile or gh aw compile daily-news.md
3. Commit and push changes
4. Expected resolution: Immediate (once deployed)

Option 3: Deprecate Workflow

• If Daily News is no longer needed, disable the workflow
• Close this issue as "won't fix"

Recommended Action

Add TAVILY_API_KEY secret (Option 1) - maintains workflow functionality while providing immediate fix.

Impact

• Current: 11+ days without daily repository updates
• After fix: Normal daily operation resumes
• Estimated fix time: 5-10 minutes (to add secret and test)

Reference

• Workflow Health Dashboard: Workflow Health Dashboard - 2026-01-19 #10638
• Failure run: https://github.com/githubnext/gh-aw/actions/runs/21131810833
• Log analysis: Agent job, step 31 "Start MCP gateway"

AI generated by Workflow Health Manager - Meta-Orchestrator