Agent Persona Exploration - 2026-02-24

[github-actions[bot]]

Persona Overview

• Agent Tested: agentic-workflows (note: agent unavailable as direct task type; responses synthesized from AGENTS.md + .github/workflows/*.md examples by general-purpose agent)
• Scenarios Tested: 8 (across 5 personas: Backend Engineer, Frontend Dev, DevOps, QA Tester, Product Manager)
• Average Quality Score: 4.38/5.0
• Score Range: 3.8 (DO-2 cost anomaly) → 4.8 (BE-2 deploy failure)

Key Findings

1. Strong fundamentals: 7/8 scenarios scored ≥4.2 — trigger selection, security practices, and safe-outputs usage were consistently high quality
2. External integration is the gap: The only weak scenario (DO-2, 3.8) involves external cloud billing APIs not accessible from GitHub context; real infra cost monitoring needs out-of-band data ingestion
3. noop must always be explicit: Multiple patterns depend on calling noop when no action is needed — missing this is the most common cause of safe-output failures per ci-doctor analysis
4. Engine selection is nuanced: copilot for speed/triage; claude for deep multi-file analysis or prose generation — two scenarios misassign this
5. Parameterization is the biggest prompt quality gap: Hardcoded label names, coverage thresholds, and cost anomaly percentages should use vars.* to avoid per-repo editing

Top Patterns

1. Most common trigger types: pull_request (3/8), schedule (3/8), push: tags (1/8), workflow_run (1/8)
2. Most recommended tools: github.toolsets: [pull_requests, repos] used in 5/8; bash tools (git diff, jq) in 4/8; cache-memory in 2/8
3. Security practices: All scenarios used read-only permissions + safe-outputs for mutations; network.allowed: [defaults] sufficient for 6/8; rate-limit recommended for all PR-triggered flows
4. Deduplication pattern: skip-if-match or close-older-issues: true recommended for all scheduled issue-creating workflows

View High Quality Responses (Top 3)

BE-2 (4.8) — Deploy Failure Triage: Best overall. Used workflow_run trigger with an if: conclusion == 'failure' guard — exactly mirrors the ci-doctor pattern. actions toolset provides job log access natively. close-older-issues: true prevents issue pile-up. Cache-memory used for baseline pattern learning.

BE-1 (4.6) — DB Schema Review: Excellent path-filtered pull_request trigger (only fires on migration files). Inline review comments via safe-outputs are idiomatic. claude engine selected correctly for multi-file diff reasoning. Minor gap: draft PR exclusion not included.

PM-2 (4.6) — Release Notes Draft: Perfect trigger (push: tags: v*). Strongest prompt clarity of all scenarios — grouping taxonomy explicitly defined, human review guard stated. claude correct for prose generation. One enhancement: update-release safe-output would auto-populate the GitHub release body.

View Areas for Improvement (Top 3)

DO-2 (3.8) — Infra Cost Anomaly: GitHub billing API covers Actions/Packages/Storage only — real cloud infrastructure costs (AWS/GCP/Azure) require external API access that wasn't addressed. Network domain allowlist for billing endpoints was missing. Anomaly threshold (20%) should be a vars. input, not hardcoded.

QA-1 (4.2) — Coverage Delta: Assumes CI uploads a coverage artifact in a known format (lcov/JSON). Coverage tool varies (Jest/pytest/Go) and wasn't parameterized. Artifact retrieval via actions toolset is correct but fragile without explicit format documentation.

PM-1 (4.4) — Weekly PR Digest: Customer label names (feature, fix, breaking-change) are repo-specific and were hardcoded. Using vars.CUSTOMER_LABELS or documenting label configuration is a recurring gap for stakeholder-facing workflows.

Recommendations

1. Add vars.* guidance to workflow templates — Parameterized thresholds (coverage delta %, cost anomaly %), label lists, and cron schedules make workflows portable across repos without editing
2. Strengthen noop documentation — Make explicit that noop must be invoked when the agent determines no action is needed; this is the rejig docs #1 runtime failure mode for safe-output workflows
3. Add an "external data ingestion" pattern — Scenarios requiring non-GitHub data (cloud billing, monitoring metrics) need a documented ingestion pattern (e.g., writing data to a branch/artifact first, then triggering the agentic workflow)

View Methodology Note

The agentic-workflows custom agent was not available as a registered task agent type in this run environment (available types: explore, task, general-purpose, code-review, contribution-checker, developer.instructions, opengrep-autofix). Responses were synthesized by a general-purpose agent with full access to AGENTS.md and .github/workflows/*.md example workflows. Results represent expected behavior grounded in documented patterns rather than live agent invocation. A safeoutputs-missing_tool report was filed for this limitation.

Historical comparison data stored at: /tmp/gh-aw/cache-memory/persona-exploration-2026-02-24.json

References:

• §22332460160

AI generated by Agent Persona Explorer

[github-actions[bot]]

💥 KAPOW! 🦸 THE SMOKE TEST AGENT HAS ARRIVED! 🦸

⚡ WHOOSH! Claude Code descends from the CI skies, cape billowing in the GitHub Actions wind...

🔥 "Fear not, citizens of gh-aw!" the agent declares, scanning the codebase with laser precision 🔥

💫 All systems green! The smoke test has swept through this repo like a superhero montage:

• MCP servers? SUBDUED! ✅
• Build pipeline? VANQUISHED! ✅
• Playwright browser? TAMED! ✅
• Agentic workflows? ACTIVATED! ✅

ZAP! POW! BOOM!

🎯 Mission: COMPLETE — Smoke Test Agent signing off! Until next time, repository!

[flies off into the sunset of passing CI checks]

💥 [THE END] — Illustrated by Smoke Claude

[github-actions[bot]]

🤖 Smoke test agent was here!

I've been dispatched to audit this discussion as part of run §22334817339. Everything looks great! The agent persona exploration report is thorough and insightful.

The robots have reviewed your work and approve. 🦾✨

📰 BREAKING: Report filed by Smoke Copilot

[pelikhan]

/plan

[github-actions[bot]]

💥 WHOOSH! 🦸 THE SMOKE TEST AGENT HAS ARRIVED! 💨

KA-POW! Your friendly neighborhood Claude smoke test just swooped in and gave this discussion a high-five!

🌟 ZZZAP! — All systems are GO! The agentic workflows are firing on all cylinders!

— Claude Smoke Test Agent, Run 22334817301 🚀

💥 [THE END] — Illustrated by Smoke Claude