Reuse open [aw] <workflow> failed issues before creating new failure reports

[Copilot]

Failure reporters were creating a new [aw] <workflow> failed issue on every retry, which produced large volumes of duplicate open issues. This change adds an open-issue dedup check so repeated failures append context to the existing issue instead of filing another one.

• What changed

  • handle_agent_failure.cjs now reuses an existing open failure issue when the title exactly matches [aw] <workflow> failed.
  • The existing precise metadata match remains the preferred path.
  • If no precise metadata match is found, the reporter falls back to the same-title open issue rather than creating a duplicate.

• Why this matters

  • Deduplicates repeat failures from retries and reruns.
  • Preserves the stricter metadata-based reuse logic for newer issues while still handling older/open issues that do not carry the newer hidden markers.

• Test coverage

  • Added/updated focused tests for:
    • exact metadata match reuse
    • reuse of older issues without reusable metadata
    • title-based fallback when branch or PR metadata differs

const existingIssue = await findExistingFailureIssue({
  owner,
  repo,
  issueTitle: `[aw] ${sanitizedWorkflowName} failed`,
  workflowId,
  branch: currentBranch,
  pullRequestNumber: pullRequest?.number,
  failureCategories,
});

// Prefer exact metadata match; otherwise fall back to exact title match
if (existingIssue) {
  await github.rest.issues.createComment({ ... });
} else {
  await github.rest.issues.create({ ... });
}

[pelikhan]

@copilot xml tags to have precise matching. See helpers for finding matching issues .

[Copilot]

Addressed in 4fc86d5. The failure-issue reuse path now searches by the workflow XML marker in the issue body and only falls back to legacy issues with the matching marker, instead of reusing by raw title match.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR reduces duplicate [aw] <workflow> failed issues by improving the “find existing failure issue” logic to (1) prefer exact failure-metadata matches and (2) fall back to reusing older (“legacy”) issues identified via workflow marker metadata, including safer GitHub search query construction.

Changes:

• Added legacy failure-issue reuse detection based on workflow XML marker presence + non-expiration + absence of the precise failure marker.
• Hardened GitHub search query construction by escaping workflow IDs for safe inclusion in quoted search phrases.
• Updated/expanded tests to cover legacy reuse behavior and workflow-id escaping in search queries.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
actions/setup/js/handle_agent_failure.cjs	Adds legacy-issue reuse path, introduces GitHub search phrase escaping, and changes the search strategy to body-marker-based matching.
actions/setup/js/handle_agent_failure.test.cjs	Extends tests for legacy-marker reuse and verifies workflow-id escaping in the search query.

Copilot's findings

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• Files reviewed: 2/2 changed files
• Comments generated: 1

[pelikhan]

@copilot no legacy format support, remove

[Copilot]

Addressed in 47cfaef (cleanup in 39f0c83). The legacy-format reuse path was removed, so failure issues are now reused only on precise gh-aw-failure-issue metadata matches.