[copilot-session-insights] Daily Copilot Agent Session Analysis — 2026-05-13

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Executive Summary

• Sessions Analyzed: 50
• Analysis Period: 2026-05-13 06:48–07:05 UTC (17-minute window)
• Completion Rate: 0% — every fetched run is sitting in conclusion = action_required
• Average Duration: N/A (all created_at == updated_at; runs never started)
• Experimental Strategy: None this run

Data caveat: The session-data fetch returned the workflow-run list but the conversation-log directory (/tmp/gh-aw/session-data/logs/) was empty. No agent transcripts were available, so true behavioral analysis (reasoning, tool selection, error recovery) was skipped. This report focuses on the gate-firing pattern that the available data actually describes.

Key Metrics

Metric	Value	Trend
Total Sessions	50	— (baseline)
Successful Completions	0 (0%)	—
Stuck in action_required	50 (100%)	—
Failed / Errored	0 (0%)	—
Average Duration	N/A	—
Loop Detection Rate	N/A (no transcripts)	—
Context Issues	N/A (no transcripts)	—
Distinct Branches Touched	4	—
Max Gates on One Branch	18	—

📈 Session Trends Analysis

Completion Patterns

Every minute bucket in the 17-minute window shows the same pattern: red action_required line rises whenever new commits land, the green "successful" line stays flat at zero, and the completion rate never leaves 0%. The bursty shape (peaks at 06:48, 06:52, 07:01, 07:04) tracks the moments where multiple gate workflows fired simultaneously on the same branch.

Duration & Efficiency

Four copilot/* branches account for all 50 stuck runs. refactor-extract-safe-outputs-config (PR #31884) leads with 18 gate firings in roughly an hour of wall clock, followed by aw-failures-fix-daily-report-generator (14). All four branches have been open for 59–74 minutes — just inside the warning band, none yet at the critical (>2h) threshold.

Success Factors ✅

No completed sessions in the window — success-factor analysis is not statistically meaningful with this dataset. Re-evaluate once conversation logs are available and at least some runs reach success.

Failure Signals ⚠️

1. Pre-agent gate sweeps stuck in action_required: 100% of fetched runs.
   • Every workflow run on these copilot branches needs manual approval (or agent dispatch) before its job will execute. The 50 runs we analyzed never started.
2. High gate fan-out per branch: up to 6 workflows × multiple commits = 18 stuck runs on one PR.
   • Each new commit fans out into Scout, Q, Agentic Commands, Smoke CI, CGO, and Doc Build, multiplying the approval backlog.
3. No conversation transcripts available: the copilot-session-data-fetch module produced 0 of 50 expected transcript files.
   • This blocks the behavioral analysis the workflow is designed to do.

Prompt Quality Analysis 📝

Cannot be performed this run — no transcripts means no prompt content was visible. Recommendation: fix the transcript-fetch step (see "For System Improvements" below) before attempting prompt-quality scoring again.

Orphaned Branch Escalation Alerts 🚨

Branches with ≥5 simultaneous gate firings and no Copilot agent assigned for >2 hours.

Summary

• Orphaned Branches Today: 0 out of 4 active branches (0%) by the strict criterion (no Copilot / copilot-swe-agent in assignees)
• Historical Baseline: ~40% orphaned rate (no prior runs in this repo's cache; baseline is from spec, not empirical history)
• Status: ✅ NORMAL — no true orphans, but all 4 branches are in the warning wait-time band (1–2h) and would tip into high severity within the next hour if not resolved

Escalation Candidates

Branch	PR	Gate Count	Wait Time	Severity	Recommended Action
copilot/refactor-extract-safe-outputs-config	#31884	18 gates	~60m	🟡 Warning (agent assigned)	Approve/dispatch agent runs before 2h cutoff
copilot/aw-failures-fix-daily-report-generator	#31885	14 gates	~59m	🟡 Warning (agent assigned)	Approve/dispatch agent runs before 2h cutoff
copilot/refactor-update-workflows-params	#31886	9 gates	~59m	🟡 Warning (agent assigned)	Approve/dispatch agent runs before 2h cutoff
copilot/fix-duplicate-code-in-yaml-extraction	#31881	9 gates	~74m	🟡 Warning (agent assigned)	Approve/dispatch agent runs before 2h cutoff

All four PRs have Copilot listed as an assignee, so by the strict orphan filter (no agent) there are zero critical/high escalations. The latent problem is the approval bottleneck, not assignment.

CI Waste Estimate

• Stuck gate-hours so far: 50 gates × ~1h avg wait ≈ ~50 CI-hours of fan-out pressure queued behind manual approval
• Recoverable capacity: Approving (or auto-approving) gates on the 4 branches above would unstick ~100% of the queue. The bigger architectural lever is reducing gate fan-out per commit (see recommendations).

Notable Observations

Loop Detection

Not measurable — no conversation transcripts.

Tool Usage

Not measurable — no conversation transcripts.

Context Issues

Not measurable — no conversation transcripts.

Per-branch × workflow firing matrix

Branch	Scout	Q	Agentic Commands	Smoke CI	CGO	Doc Build
refactor-extract-safe-outputs-config	4	4	4	2	2	2
aw-failures-fix-daily-report-generator	4	4	4	1	1	0
refactor-update-workflows-params	2	2	2	1	1	1
fix-duplicate-code-in-yaml-extraction	2	2	2	1	1	1
Total	12	12	12	5	5	4

Experimental Analysis

Standard analysis only — no experimental strategy this run. (Cache memory was empty at start of run; an experimental rotation will be considered once a baseline of 5+ daily analyses exists.)

Actionable Recommendations

For Users Writing Task Descriptions

Skipped this run — no transcripts to derive prompt-quality guidance from. Will resurface once conversation logs are flowing.

For System Improvements

1. Fix conversation-log fetching (highest priority)
   • Symptom: /tmp/gh-aw/session-data/logs/ was empty for all 50 sessions.
   • Impact: blocks every behavioral metric this workflow is designed to produce (loop detection, tool usage, context issues, prompt quality).
   • Action: inspect the copilot-session-data-fetch shared module and confirm the API endpoint / artifact extraction step is wired correctly for this repo's sessions.
2. Reduce gate fan-out per commit
   • Three workflows (Scout, Q, Agentic Commands) fire on every commit to every copilot branch and dominate the queue (36 of 50 runs = 72%).
   • Consider gating these on a paths-changed filter, debouncing to one run per minute, or merging them into a single dispatcher.
3. Auto-approve action_required for copilot/* branches with an agent already assigned
   • All 4 branches have Copilot as an assignee, but gates still sit awaiting human approval — the manual approval step adds no signal for these PRs.

For Tool Development

1. Surface "approval bottleneck" as a first-class metric
   • The workflow currently looks for orphaned branches but misses the more common case where agents are assigned and gates are still stuck. Add an approval_bottleneck severity tier alongside orphan.
2. Persist a 30-day gate-firing history
   • Today's run had no historical baseline (cache-memory/session-analysis/ did not exist). After 7 days of runs, charts will become real trend lines instead of single-day snapshots.

Trends Over Time

No prior analyses in cache — this is the baseline run. After 7 days the charts will show meaningful day-over-day movement.

Statistical Summary

Total Sessions Analyzed:     50
Successful Completions:      0 (0%)
Stuck (action_required):     50 (100%)
Failed Sessions:             0 (0%)
Abandoned Sessions:          0 (0%)
In-Progress Sessions:        0 (0%)

Average Session Duration:    N/A (runs never started)
Median Session Duration:     N/A
Longest Session:             N/A
Shortest Session:            N/A

Loop Detection:              N/A (no transcripts)
Context Issues:              N/A (no transcripts)
Tool Failures:               N/A (no transcripts)

High-Quality Prompts:        N/A (no transcripts)
Medium-Quality Prompts:      N/A (no transcripts)
Low-Quality Prompts:         N/A (no transcripts)

Active copilot/* branches:   4
Max gates on one branch:     18 (PR #31884)
True orphans (no agent):     0
PRs with Copilot assigned:   4 / 4 (100%)

Next Steps

• Highest priority: Investigate why conversation transcripts were not downloaded — without them this workflow cannot produce its primary insights.
• Review the 4 warning-band branches and approve/dispatch their queued gate runs before they cross the 2-hour threshold.
• Evaluate gate fan-out reduction (paths-changed filters, debouncing, dispatcher consolidation).
• Schedule follow-up analysis in 24 hours to begin building real day-over-day trend lines.

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References:

• §25785310316 — this analysis run

Analysis generated automatically on 2026-05-13

Generated by Copilot Session Insights · ● 12.5M · ◷

• expires on May 14, 2026, 7:51 AM UTC

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This discussion was automatically closed because it expired on 2026-05-14T07:51:31.131Z.

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