GitHub Agent Workflows

GitHub Agentic Workflows with safe-output guardrails. Engine and model are configurable per workflow, and updates are delivered via the v0 tag.

Install (caller-based, recommended)

Copy a workflow's example.yml from gh-agent-workflows/ and customize inputs. No gh-aw CLI required.

# .github/workflows/trigger-pr-review.yml
name: PR Review
on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, ready_for_review]
jobs:
  run:
    uses: elastic/ai-github-actions/.github/workflows/gh-aw-pr-review.lock.yml@v0
    secrets:
      COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Each workflow directory contains an example.yml starter and a README for trigger details, inputs, and safe outputs.

Available workflows

Human-coordinated workflows

Workflow	Trigger	Description
Docs PR Review	/docs-review on PRs	Review docs for style guide, applies_to, and consistency
Issue Triage	New issues	Investigate and provide implementation plans
Issue Triage (with PR)	New issues	Triage plus automatic draft PR for straightforward fixes
Mention in Issue	/ai in issues	Answer questions, debug, create PRs
Mention in PR	/ai in PRs	Review, fix code, push changes
PR CI Detective	Failed PR checks	Diagnose failures and recommend fixes
PR CI Fixer	Manual (workflow_dispatch)	Opt-in fixes for failed PR checks
PR Checks Fix	Failed PR checks	Analyze and push fixes for failed PR checks
PR Review	PR opened/updated	AI code review with inline comments

Continuous improvement / agent factory workflows

Workflow	Trigger	Description
Agent Efficiency	Weekday schedule	Analyze agent logs for inefficiencies
Agent Suggestions	Weekly schedule	Suggest new agent workflows based on repo and downstream needs
Breaking Change Detect	Weekday schedule	Detect undocumented public breaking changes
Bug Exterminator	Weekday schedule	Fix bug-hunter issues and open a focused PR
Bug Hunter	Weekday schedule	Find reproducible bugs and file reports
Code Simplifier	Weekday schedule	Simplify overcomplicated code with high-confidence refactors
Docs Drift	Weekday schedule	Detect code changes needing doc updates
Docs Drift External	Weekday schedule	Detect code changes needing published Elastic doc updates
Docs New Contributor Review	Weekly schedule	Review docs from a new contributor perspective
Docs New Contributor Review External	Weekly schedule	Review docs cross-referencing published Elastic documentation
Downstream Health	Daily schedule	Monitor downstream repo quality
Flaky Test Triage	Weekday schedule + failed CI runs	Identify repeated flaky failures and file root-cause-first triage reports
Project Summary	Daily schedule	Summarize recent activity and priorities
Release Update Check	Weekly schedule	Open a PR updating pinned ai-github-actions workflow SHAs and suggest workflow changes
Semantic Function Clustering	Weekday schedule	Identify function clustering refactor opportunities
Small Problem Fixer	Weekday schedule	Fix small, related issues and open a focused PR
Stale Issues	Weekday schedule	Find resolved issues that can be closed
Test Improvement	Weekly schedule	Add targeted tests and clean up redundant coverage

Secrets

These workflows require a Copilot PAT stored as COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN.

1. Create a Copilot PAT with the copilot-requests scope (the scope is only available for public repositories).
2. Store it as a repository secret:

gh aw secrets set COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN --value "(pat)"

UI path: Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → New repository secret.

See the upstream gh-aw auth docs for canonical steps.

Agentic maintenance workflow required

Any workflow that uses safe-outputs with expires (create-issue, create-pull-request, create-discussion) requires the agentics-maintenance workflow so expired items are closed automatically. Install it once per repo:

mkdir -p .github/workflows && curl -sL \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/ai-github-actions/v0/.github/workflows/agentics-maintenance.yml \
  -o .github/workflows/agentics-maintenance.yml

Standard inputs

All workflows accept these optional inputs via workflow_call:

Input	Type	Description
additional-instructions	string	Repo-specific instructions appended to the agent prompt
setup-commands	string	Shell commands to run before the agent starts (dependency install, build, etc.)

setup-commands examples

# Python
setup-commands: |
  pip install -e ".[dev]"

# Node.js
setup-commands: |
  npm ci

# Go
setup-commands: |
  go mod download

# Multiple steps
setup-commands: |
  pip install -e ".[dev]"
  npm ci
  make build

How it works

Each workflow has two layers:

1. Workflow (gh-aw-*.md -> gh-aw-*.lock.yml): The agent logic, compiled by gh-aw. Triggers only on workflow_call with standard inputs (additional-instructions, setup-commands) and a COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN secret.
2. Trigger (<name>/example.yml): A plain YAML file that defines the actual event triggers (schedule, PR events, slash commands, etc.) and calls the compiled .lock.yml via uses:. These serve as both examples for consumers and dogfood for this repo (copied to .github/workflows/trigger-*.yml by scripts/dogfood.sh for workflows not listed in EXCLUDED_WORKFLOWS, currently flaky-test-triage and issue-triage-pr).

Consumer repos copy a workflow's example.yml, change the uses: path if needed, and customize the with: inputs. Updates propagate automatically when this repo updates the v0 tag on release.