Agent Performance Report — Week of 2026-08-01

[github-actions[bot]]

Executive Summary

• Agents analyzed: 20 (top by volume) + bottom-10 prompt-quality audit
• Total outputs reviewed: ~110 failure/status issues, 3 memory files, workflow frontmatter for 3 candidates
• Average quality score: ~63/100 (plateaued since Jul 8)
• Average effectiveness score: ~64/100 (plateaued)
• Top performers: Copilot SWE Agent (merge rate ~73%), Auto-Triage Issues, PR Triage Agent
• Needs improvement: Matt Pocock Skills Reviewer, Design Decision Gate, Impeccable Skills Reviewer, Q workflow, Agentic Commands

Critical Finding: Deprecation Fix Never Merged 🚨

PR #48730 ("Deprecate auto-run paths for Matt Pocock Skills Reviewer and Design Decision Gate") was closed without merging on 2026-07-28, not merged as prior reports implied. Verified via gh pr view 48730 → state: CLOSED, mergedAt: null. Both workflows still carry live on.pull_request triggers today (confirmed in current .md frontmatter) and report-failure-as-issue is not set to false anywhere in either file.

Consequence: churn continued after the "fix":

• Matt Pocock Skills Reviewer: 7 new failure issues since Jul 28 (close date), still 100% AR on PR-triggered runs.
• Design Decision Gate: 5 new failure issues since Jul 28, including two new distinct root causes ([aw-failures] Design Decision Gate: 'Pre-fetch ADR gate PR context' step fails before agent starts #49144 pre-fetch step fails before agent starts; [aw-failures] Design Decision Gate exhausts LLM invocation cap after permission-denied retries on shell-expanded file paths #49096 LLM invocation cap exhausted from permission-denied retries on shell-expanded paths) — these are novel issues, not recurrences of the original churn.
• Impeccable Skills Reviewer: improved to 1 new issue since Jul 28 (CLI hang-on-exit fix PR fix: reduce post-completion idle watchdog and add cleanup timeouts to prevent Copilot CLI hang on exit #44254/fix: add post-result watchdog to codex_harness to prevent CLI hang-on-exit #48499 did land) but hit a new distinct failure mode ([aw] Impeccable Skills Reviewer hit AI credits rate limit #49380 AI credits rate limit) on Jul 31.

Action: Filed issue below to re-open the deprecation decision, since the previously "resolved" fix never actually shipped.

Bottom-10 Prompt Deficiency Audit

Agent	Q	Deficiency Category	Evidence
Matt Pocock Skills Reviewer	~48	Stale tool guidance / missing self-assessment loop	15 auto-filed "failed"/"no safe outputs"/"HTTP 400" issues since 2026-07-25; workflow still lacks a failure-mode circuit breaker despite 3+ weeks of chronic churn
Design Decision Gate	~45	Stale tool guidance, low actionability	New failure classes emerging (#49144 pre-fetch crash, #49096 permission-denied retry storm) instead of the original root cause being fixed — prompt/tool-path handling for shell-expanded file paths needs hardening
Q workflow	25	Missing self-assessment loop	9 AR / 20 runs sampled despite quality-gate PR #43527 merged 2026-07-05 (confirmed MERGED) — the gate did not resolve the AR pattern; root cause is likely unrelated to what #43527 addressed
Agentic Commands	40	Generic task framing	12 AR / 20 runs — persistent centralized command-routing failures untouched since Jul 8 baseline
Impeccable Skills Reviewer	55	Low-actionability outputs (new failure mode)	CLI-hang fix worked, but no rate-limit backoff/self-check added — hit AI-credits cap on #49380 with no graceful degradation path
PR Code Quality Reviewer	~55	Missing self-assessment loop	Shared CLI-hang cluster with Impeccable; needs the same hardening applied elsewhere
Test Quality Sentinel	~55	Missing self-assessment loop	Same shared cluster as above
AI Moderator	~55	Stale engine config	Historical Codex-engine 404s (per shared-alerts); needs migration to copilot engine, unresolved for weeks
Metrics Collector	~50	Stale/broken data pipeline	Data stale since Jan 2026 per metrics/latest.json (collection_status: partial) — undermines every downstream orchestrator relying on metrics/latest.json
Daily yamllint Fixer	~50	Low completion rate	30% success historically; no distinct new evidence this run, carried from prior baseline

Prioritized Prompt-Improvement Backlog

1. Re-open deprecation for Matt Pocock Skills Reviewer + Design Decision Gate (High, low effort) — PR Deprecate auto-run paths for Matt Skills Reviewer and Design Decision Gate to stop chronic failure-issue churn #48730 never merged; re-submit or land the on.pull_request removal + report-failure-as-issue: false change. Expected impact: eliminates ~12 low-value auto-filed issues/week.
2. Fix Metrics Collector engine failure (High, medium effort) — metrics/latest.json has been stale since Jan 2026, degrading every downstream orchestrator's trend analysis. Expected impact: restores accurate week-over-week scoring.
3. Harden Design Decision Gate's file-path handling (Medium, medium effort) — new [aw-failures] Design Decision Gate exhausts LLM invocation cap after permission-denied retries on shell-expanded file paths #49096/[aw-failures] Design Decision Gate: 'Pre-fetch ADR gate PR context' step fails before agent starts #49144 failures suggest shell-expansion/permission issues in the pre-fetch step independent of the deprecation decision. Expected impact: removes 2 new failure classes even if deprecation stalls again.
4. Add credit/rate-limit backoff to Impeccable Skills Reviewer (Medium, low effort) — [aw] Impeccable Skills Reviewer hit AI credits rate limit #49380 shows no graceful handling of AI-credit caps. Expected impact: converts hard failures into soft-skips.
5. Re-validate Q workflow quality gate (Medium, medium effort) — PR Add shared prompt quality gate for plateaued agent-review workflows #43527 merged Jul 5 but AR rate is still ~45% (9/20) in current sampling; the "fix" evidently didn't address the actual root cause. Needs fresh diagnosis, not re-filing.

Actions Taken This Run

• Verified (via gh pr view) that PR Deprecate auto-run paths for Matt Skills Reviewer and Design Decision Gate to stop chronic failure-issue churn #48730 was closed unmerged, correcting a stale assumption in prior memory files that treated the deprecation as resolved.
• Filed one issue to re-open the deprecation/redesign decision for both chronic-failure workflows.
• Did not re-file any of the persistent "DO NOT RE-FILE" issues tracked in shared-alerts.md.

Next Steps

1. Land the deprecation PR (or an equivalent) for Matt Pocock / Design Decision Gate — track until mergedAt is non-null.
2. Diagnose Metrics Collector engine failure so metrics/latest.json stops reporting Jan 2026 data.
3. Re-audit Q workflow's actual failure logs (not just the merged gate PR) to find the true root cause of persistent AR.
4. Monitor Impeccable Skills Reviewer for repeat AI-credit rate-limit hits; consider adding a cap/backoff.

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Analysis period: 2026-07-08 to 2026-08-01 (with focus on 2026-07-28 to 2026-08-01 post-"fix" evidence)
Next report: 2026-08-08

Generated by ⚡ Agent Performance Analyzer - Meta-Orchestrator · auto · 53.5 AIC · ⌖ 15.1 AIC · ⊞ 17K · ◷

• expires on Aug 2, 2026, 5:06 AM UTC-08:00

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This discussion was automatically closed because it expired on 2026-08-02T13:06:05.780Z.

Closed by Workflow