[copilot-session-insights] Daily Copilot Agent Session Analysis — 2026-01-30

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Executive Summary

• Sessions Analyzed: 50
• Analysis Period: Jan 30, 2026
• Completion Rate: 16.0% (↓ from 19.22% 7-day avg)
• Average Duration: 13.46 minutes
• Experimental Strategy: None (standard analysis)

Key Metrics

Metric	Value	Trend
Total Sessions	50	—
Successful Completions	8 (16.0%)	↓
Failed/Abandoned	2 (4.0%)	↑
Action Required	30 (60.0%)	→
Skipped	10 (20.0%)	→
Average Duration	13.46 min	↑
Loop Detection Rate	10 (23.3%)	↑
Context Issues	5 (11.6%)	→
Log Availability	43/50 (86.0%)	↑

Success Factors ✅

Patterns associated with successful task completion:

1. Error Recovery Mechanisms: Critical Success Factor

• Success rate: 61.54% when recovery strategies present
• Found in 13 sessions (30.2% of analyzed logs)
• Example strategies: retry logic, fallback options, tool switching
• Impact: High - strongest predictor of success

2. Task Category Performance

• Security tasks: 66.67% success rate, fastest completion (2.84 min avg)
• CI-Build tasks: 28.57% success rate despite high complexity
• PR-Review tasks: 22.22% success rate, moderate duration (14.44 min)
• Other tasks: 22.22% success rate with varied workloads

3. Prompt Quality Correlation

• High-quality prompts: 14 sessions (28.0%)
• Medium-quality: 10 sessions (20.0%)
• Low-quality: 26 sessions (52.0%)
• Pattern: Specific task descriptions ("License Compliance Check", "Addressing comment on PR") correlate with success

Example High-Quality Prompt:

License Compliance Check
``````
- ✅ Clear objective
- ✅ Specific scope
- ✅ Measurable outcome

### Failure Signals ⚠️

Common indicators of inefficiency or failure:

#### 1. **Loop Detection - CI-Build Category**
   - **Critical finding**: 71.43% loop rate in CI-build tasks
   - Affects 5 out of 7 CI sessions
   - Suggests retry logic may need optimization
   - **Impact**: Moderate success (28.57%) despite high loop rate

#### 2. **Context Confusion**
   - Found in 5 sessions (11.6% of analyzed logs)
   - Primarily affects CI-build category (5 instances)
   - **Pattern**: Missing context or unclear requirements
   - No sessions with context confusion succeeded

#### 3. **Orchestration Dominance (By Design)**
   - 60% action_required rate (30 sessions)
   - Average duration: 15.94 minutes
   - **Note**: This is expected behavior for workflow orchestration
   - Not a failure signal but impacts completion rate metrics

**Example Low-Quality Prompt**:
``````
Q
``````
- ❌ No context
- ❌ Generic agent name
- ❌ Unclear objective

### Prompt Quality Analysis 📝

#### High-Quality Prompt Characteristics

- **Specific action verbs**: "Running", "Addressing", "Checking"
- **Clear scope**: "License Compliance", "PR comment"
- **Measurable outcomes**: Success/failure clearly defined
- **Found in**: 28.0% of sessions

**Success rate correlation**: 42.9% (6/14 high-quality prompts succeeded)

#### Low-Quality Prompt Characteristics

- **Generic names**: "Q", "Scout", "Archie", "/cloclo"
- **System agents**: Orchestration-level names
- **No context**: Single-word or cryptic identifiers
- **Found in**: 52.0% of sessions

**Success rate correlation**: 0% (0/26 low-quality prompts succeeded)

#### Improvement Template

**Before** (Low Quality):
``````
Fix the bug
``````

**After** (High Quality):
``````
Fix authentication timeout in login API endpoint (issue #1234)
``````

### Notable Observations

#### Loop Detection Analysis
- **Total sessions with loops**: 10 (23.3%)
- **By category**:
  - CI-build: 71.43% loop rate (5/7 sessions)
  - Security: 100% loop rate (3/3 sessions) but 66.67% success
  - PR-review: 22.22% loop rate (2/9 sessions)
  - Orchestration: 0% loop rate

**Insight**: Loops aren't inherently bad - security tasks show 100% loop rate but high success. CI-build loops indicate potential optimization opportunity.

#### Context Issues Distribution
- **Total sessions with context confusion**: 5 (11.6%)
- **All 5 instances in CI-build category**
- **0% success rate** for sessions with context issues
- **Pattern**: Unclear requirements or missing prerequisites

#### Tool Usage Patterns
- **Error recovery strategies**: Present in 30.2% of sessions
  - Retry: Most common
  - Fallback: Secondary strategy
  - Tool-switch: Adaptive approach
- **Recovery success rate**: 61.54% - validates effectiveness

### Actionable Recommendations

#### For Users Writing Task Descriptions

1. **Use Specific, Descriptive Names**: Include action verbs and clear objectives
   - ✅ "Address PR #12456 comment about error handling"
   - ❌ "Fix PR"

2. **Provide Explicit Context**: Include file paths, issue references, expected outcomes
   - Example: "Update authentication in src/api/auth.ts to fix timeout (issue #1234)"

3. **Define Success Criteria**: Make completion measurable
   - Example: "Run smoke tests and ensure all 15 test cases pass"

4. **Don't Fear Error Messages**: Recovery mechanisms are effective (61.54% success rate)
   - Trust the retry logic for transient failures
   - Provide context when errors persist

#### For System Improvements

1. **Optimize CI-Build Retry Logic** (High Priority)
   - Current: 71.43% loop rate with 28.57% success
   - Target: Reduce unnecessary retries while maintaining success rate
   - Investigation needed: Why 5/7 CI sessions loop?

2. **Maintain Error Recovery Mechanisms** (Critical)
   - Current: 61.54% success rate when present
   - Action: Expand to more session types
   - Document successful patterns for replication

3. **Separate Orchestration Metrics**
   - Current: 60% action_required skews completion rate
   - Action: Create separate dashboards for orchestration vs execution
   - Benefit: Clearer understanding of actual task performance

4. **Address Context Confusion in CI-Build**
   - Current: 100% of context issues in CI-build category
   - Action: Add context-gathering prompts for CI workflows
   - Benefit: Reduce 11.6% context confusion rate

#### For Tool Development

1. **Document Security Task Retry Strategy**
   - Current: 100% loop rate but 66.67% success
   - Pattern: Quick iterations (2.84 min avg) with effective retry
   - Action: Apply to other categories

2. **Support Multi-Turn Interactions**
   - Complex tasks benefit from iterative refinement
   - Enable clarification requests without penalty
   - Average successful session: 13.46 minutes

3. **Context-Gathering Tools**
   - Detect missing context early
   - Prompt for prerequisites before execution
   - Reduce context confusion from 11.6% to <5%

### Trends Over Time

Comparing with 7-day historical average (Jan 23-29):

- **Completion rate**: 16.0% vs 19.22% avg (**↓ 3.22pp**)
  - Yesterday (Jan 29): 5.13%
  - Peak (Jan 28): 44.0%
  - Trend: Variable, below recent average

- **Average duration**: 13.46 min vs 11.44 min avg (**↑ 2.02 min**)
  - Indicates more complex tasks being processed
  - Successful sessions typically longer (recovery time)

- **Loop detection**: 23.3% vs 17.1% avg (**↑ 6.2pp**)
  - Driven by CI-build category increase
  - Security category consistently high

- **Error recovery success**: 61.54% (consistent with historical pattern)
  - Jan 26: 90.9% (experimental finding)
  - Jan 28: 92.9% (breakthrough day)
  - Validates recovery as key success factor

### Statistical Summary

``````
Total Sessions Analyzed:     50
Successful Completions:      8 (16.0%)
Failed Sessions:             2 (4.0%)
Action Required:            30 (60.0%)
Skipped Sessions:           10 (20.0%)

Average Session Duration:   13.46 min
Median Session Duration:    13.65 min
Longest Session:           67.82 min
Shortest Session:           0.02 min

Loop Detection:            10 sessions (23.3%)
Context Issues:             5 sessions (11.6%)
Error Recovery Present:    13 sessions (30.2%)

High-Quality Prompts:      14 (28.0%)
Medium-Quality Prompts:    10 (20.0%)
Low-Quality Prompts:       26 (52.0%)

Log Availability:          43/50 (86.0%)

Category Performance Breakdown

Category	Count	Success Rate	Avg Duration	Loop Rate
Security	3	66.67%	2.84 min	100.0%
CI-Build	7	28.57%	9.34 min	71.43%
PR-Review	9	22.22%	14.44 min	22.22%
Other	9	22.22%	13.18 min	0.0%
Orchestration	22	0.0%	15.94 min	0.0%

Key Insight: Security category performs best despite highest loop rate - demonstrates effective retry patterns.

Next Steps

• High Priority: Investigate CI-build loop patterns (71.43% rate)
• High Priority: Expand error recovery mechanisms to more categories
• Medium Priority: Implement context-gathering prompts for CI workflows
• Medium Priority: Create separate orchestration metrics dashboard
• Low Priority: Document security task retry strategy for replication
• Schedule follow-up analysis: February 6, 2026

Methodology Notes

• Analysis approach: Standard (non-experimental)
• Log coverage: 86.0% (43/50 sessions with logs)
• Historical comparison: 7-day rolling average (Jan 23-29)
• Pattern detection: Automated analysis of 43 session logs
• Recovery identification: Retry, fallback, and tool-switch strategies tracked

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Analysis generated on 2026-01-30
Workflow Run: §21506256456
Analyzing Copilot Agent Sessions to Improve Effectiveness

AI generated by Copilot Session Insights

• expires on Feb 6, 2026, 7:36 AM UTC