Problem
The current Copilot engine turn limit (~40 turns) is insufficient for complex build-and-test workflows involving large projects. When the agent exhausts its turns, it exits without producing safe-outputs (e.g., creating summary issues), making it appear as a pipeline failure even though the agent was making progress.
Affected Scenarios
- Large Gradle/sbt/Maven projects that require extended compilation
- Projects requiring manual tool installation before building (e.g., OCaml opam, Zig dependencies)
- Monorepos with multiple build targets
- Projects where the agent needs to troubleshoot build errors iteratively
Suggested Fix
Consider increasing the default turn limit to 60-80 for workflow_dispatch triggered workflows, or adding a max-turns: frontmatter option so workflow authors can specify a higher limit for known-complex workflows.
Impact
This is the single largest category of pipeline failures for complex workflows — agents that are making good progress get cut off before they can complete their task and report results.
Problem
The current Copilot engine turn limit (~40 turns) is insufficient for complex build-and-test workflows involving large projects. When the agent exhausts its turns, it exits without producing safe-outputs (e.g., creating summary issues), making it appear as a pipeline failure even though the agent was making progress.
Affected Scenarios
Suggested Fix
Consider increasing the default turn limit to 60-80 for
workflow_dispatchtriggered workflows, or adding amax-turns:frontmatter option so workflow authors can specify a higher limit for known-complex workflows.Impact
This is the single largest category of pipeline failures for complex workflows — agents that are making good progress get cut off before they can complete their task and report results.