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[aw] Smoke Copilot: failed before agent execution started

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
github-actions, go
Domain
ci-cd, devtools

Research direction

Start with the linked failed run and inspect the Start MCP Gateway step plus gateway and setup logs, as the issue identifies this as an agent startup failure. The workflow source is .github/workflows/smoke-copilot.md; trace how it starts the gateway and compare the failed startup signals. Done when the startup failure is understood and a targeted fix is verified by a successful run.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

agentic-workflows
What happened

Smoke Copilot failed before agent execution started.

View run #40032592888 · Workflow source · Previous failures

Branch: copilot/aw-test-coverage-improver-fix

Next step

Review the failure details below for a targeted fix, or assign this issue to a coding agent to investigate.

Failure details
Runtime evidence

[!WARNING]
Task Could Not Be Completed: The workflow recorded a report_incomplete signal: the task was not completed or completion could not be confirmed.

Error details: 
Failure classification: agent_startup_failure
Agent execution state: not_started
The runtime recorded that agent execution never started. Inspect the failed startup step and gateway/setup logs in the linked run; missing safe outputs are downstream, not evidence that the agent omitted a terminal output.

A comment or other safe output does not confirm that the requested task was completed. Only inferred runtime status and error codes are reported; agent text is excluded.

Failure Diagnostics

Agent job: agent
Agent job conclusion: failure
Failing step: Start MCP Gateway

No additional engine error was captured. Check the reported failure signals and linked run for details.

Only runtime metadata is shown; agent-generated text is excluded.

Copy a debugging prompt

Paste this into your coding agent:

Debug the agentic workflow "smoke-copilot" failure.
Follow https://raw.githubusercontent.com/github/gh-aw/main/debug.md
Failed run: https://github.com/github/gh-aw-mcpg/actions/runs/40032592888

If the repository includes the agentic-workflows skill, load it before investigating.

Manage failure notifications

To stop creating failure issues for this workflow, set this in its frontmatter and recompile:

safe-outputs:
  report-failure-as-issue: false

This only disables issue reporting; it does not fix the failure.

Generated from Smoke Copilot · ◷

  • expires on Oct 30, 2026, 10:29 PM UTC
Dominant language
Go
Stars
182
Forks
54
Avg merge
6h 27m
Merged PRs (30d)
200

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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