Bot Detection workflow: precompute job failing consistently (84% failure rate)

[github-actions]

Summary

The Bot Detection workflow has escalated from occasional failures to a consistent P1 failure pattern. The precompute job is failing on the "Precompute deterministic findings" step, causing the entire workflow run to abort before the agent even starts.

Failure Pattern

Metric	Value
Failure rate (since Mar 15)	84% (11/13 runs failed)
Failure rate (last 20 runs)	65% (13/20 failed)
First observed	2026-03-13
Escalation date	2026-03-17
Failing step	precompute → "Precompute deterministic findings"
Job duration at failure	< 5 seconds

Recent Run History

Date	Status	Run
2026-03-17T06:24	❌ failure	§23181400756
2026-03-17T00:23	❌ failure	§23172369222
2026-03-16T19:36	❌ failure	§23162354836
2026-03-16T12:17	❌ failure	§23143257845
2026-03-16T06:33	❌ failure	§23131041358
2026-03-15T06:21	✅ success	§23104907629
2026-03-14T14:02	❌ failure	§23089441279

Error Analysis

The precompute job runs deterministic checks before the agent step. The failure happens in the "Precompute deterministic findings" step within ~2 seconds of starting. This suggests:

1. Credentials issue: The precompute step may require a token (e.g., for GitHub API access to check bot activity) that is now unavailable or expired
2. Script error: A change in the actions/setup scripts or the precompute logic may have broken the bot detection computation
3. Data source unavailable: The data source used for bot detection metrics may have changed or become inaccessible

Impact

• Bot detection reports are not being generated
• The workflow runs multiple times per day (schedule-based), generating consistent failures
• Cascading effect: post-processing jobs (agent, activation, conclusion, safe_outputs) are all skipped

Suggested Investigation Steps

1. Check the precompute job logs for the specific error message
2. Compare the current bot-detection.lock.yml precompute step against the version from March 15 (last success)
3. Verify any credentials or tokens used in the precompute step are still valid
4. Check if bot-detection.md was recently modified (it has a stale lock file)

Related

• Stale lock file detected: bot-detection.md was not in the stale list, which means the .lock.yml is up-to-date with the source
• This is an independent issue from the GH_AW_GITHUB_TOKEN affecting Issue Monster / PR Triage Agent

Priority: P1 | Detected: 2026-03-17 | Run: §23183314863

Generated by Workflow Health Manager - Meta-Orchestrator · ◷

• expires on Mar 18, 2026, 7:40 AM UTC