GitHub Actions Retry Recovery Audit

Audit GitHub Actions runs for fail-then-success retry recovery patterns to quantify flaky rerun waste.

Use this skill to find workflow/job slices that repeatedly fail before eventually succeeding, so teams can target flaky reruns with the biggest minute waste.

What this skill does

• Reads one or more GitHub Actions workflow run JSON exports
• Groups attempts by repository/workflow/branch/commit (headSha)
• Detects recovery sequences where one or more failure-like attempts are followed by success
• Calculates wasted minutes consumed before first success in each sequence
• Emits text or JSON output for triage dashboards and CI fail gates

Inputs

Optional:

• RUN_GLOB (default: artifacts/github-actions/*.json)
• TOP_N (default: 20)
• OUTPUT_FORMAT (text or json, default: text)
• WARN_WASTE_MINUTES (default: 20)
• CRITICAL_WASTE_MINUTES (default: 60)
• FAIL_ON_CRITICAL (0 or 1, default: 0)
• WORKFLOW_MATCH, WORKFLOW_EXCLUDE (regex, optional)
• BRANCH_MATCH, BRANCH_EXCLUDE (regex, optional)
• REPO_MATCH, REPO_EXCLUDE (regex, optional)

Collect run JSON

bash

gh run view <run-id> --json databaseId,workflowName,headBranch,headSha,conclusion,createdAt,updatedAt,url,repository \
  > artifacts/github-actions/run-<run-id>.json

Run

Text report:

bash

RUN_GLOB='artifacts/github-actions/*.json' \
WARN_WASTE_MINUTES=20 \
CRITICAL_WASTE_MINUTES=60 \
bash skills/github-actions-retry-recovery-audit/scripts/retry-recovery-audit.sh

JSON output + fail gate:

bash

RUN_GLOB='artifacts/github-actions/*.json' \
OUTPUT_FORMAT=json \
FAIL_ON_CRITICAL=1 \
bash skills/github-actions-retry-recovery-audit/scripts/retry-recovery-audit.sh

Output contract

• Exit 0 in report mode
• Exit 1 when FAIL_ON_CRITICAL=1 and critical recoveries are present
• Text output includes summary plus top recovery groups ranked by wasted minutes
• JSON output includes summary, ranked recoveries, and critical_recoveries