Allow Renovate bot + stream skill progress to PR in real time#760
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Allow Renovate bot + stream skill progress to PR in real time#760
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Two fixes to get the Renovate-triggered skill runs actually working
and observable:
1. `allowed_bots: renovate` — without this, claude-code-action
refuses to run any workflow initiated by a bot identity with
"Workflow initiated by non-human actor: renovate (type: Bot)."
This is the action's default safety behavior. We deliberately
allow Renovate (the whole point of the pipeline) but leave the
list narrow — other bots still blocked.
2. `track_progress: true` + `display_report: true` — these expose
live progress during long skill runs:
- track_progress posts a sticky tracking comment on the PR that
updates as the skill works through each phase
- display_report surfaces the Claude Code Report in the Actions
Step Summary as the step runs, not just after completion
Skill runs that previously went silent for 20-45 min now stream
live status.
The track_progress change was supposed to ship in #757 but was
pushed after the squash-merge and got orphaned on the branch.
Seen on run 24743776702 — Renovate PR #759's workflow failed with
the bot-actor rejection.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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danbarr
approved these changes
Apr 21, 2026
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Pull request overview
This PR updates the upstream-release-docs GitHub Actions workflow to (a) allow Renovate-authored PRs to run anthropics/claude-code-action without being rejected for being bot-initiated, and (b) improve operator visibility during long-running skill executions by enabling real-time progress/report streaming.
Changes:
- Allow the Renovate bot to run the Claude Code action via
allowed_bots: 'renovate'. - Enable real-time run visibility via
track_progress: true(sticky PR progress comment) anddisplay_report: true(live Step Summary report).
rdimitrov
added a commit
that referenced
this pull request
Apr 21, 2026
Two bugs from the first real Renovate run (#759) and its retry: 1. workflow_dispatch retry failed at "Resolve PR number and head ref" with "failed to run git: fatal: not a git repository". The step runs BEFORE actions/checkout, so `gh pr view` has no git context to infer the repo from. Added `--repo "$GITHUB_REPOSITORY"` to the three gh pr view calls that run pre-checkout (HEAD_REF + AUTHOR in the retry branch of step "pr", plus BASE in the retry branch of step "eff"). The error message we initially saw ("author ... is not an accepted bot") was just the shell source being echoed by `bash -x`-like output; the actual runtime never got to that point. 2. The refresh commit (~38 files, reference-asset regeneration) was only pushed at the END of the workflow, after the skill. When the skill failed or was cancelled — which it did repeatedly today — the refresh commit died with the runner and PRs ended up with only the one-line YAML bump. Now push the refresh commit as soon as it's created, so the reference-asset work lands on the PR branch independent of skill outcome. This was a pending commit that got orphaned by #760's squash-merge; re-shipping. Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Three small fixes to unblock + observe the Renovate-driven skill runs:
1. Allow the Renovate bot to trigger the skill
Seen on run 24743776702 against PR #759:
anthropics/claude-code-action@v1defaults to refusing bot-initiated workflows as a safety measure. Since the whole point of this pipeline is to react to Renovate's version-bump PRs, we explicitly allow that one bot viaallowed_bots: 'renovate'. Other bots remain blocked.2. Real-time progress visibility
Skill runs can take 20–45 min;
gh run view --logwon't surface any output until the whole run finishes. The action exposes two inputs that fix the black-hole experience:track_progress: true— posts a sticky tracking comment on the PR that updates as the skill works through each phasedisplay_report: true— streams the Claude Code Report to the Actions Step Summary live, rather than waiting for the step to finishOperators can now watch progress from either the PR page or the run page, in real time.
3. Push the refresh commit immediately (don't batch with skill push)
Diagnosed from runs 24743070052 + 24743776702: the "Commit refreshed reference assets" step was creating a real commit locally (~38 file changes covering all toolhive reference assets), but the
git pushonly happened at the END of the workflow in the final "Commit and push" step AFTER the skill. When the skill failed or was cancelled, that final push never ran, and the refresh commit died with the runner.Result: PR #759 and PR #756 ended up with only the one-line YAML bump — even though the refresh logic had actually worked correctly upstream of the skill.
Fix: push the refresh commit right after creating it. The skill step can now fail or hang without losing the reference asset updates; they're already on the PR branch by the time the skill starts.
Testing
🤖 Generated with Claude Code