actions-debugging

GitHub Actions Debugging

Why This is Copilot-Exclusive

Copilot CLI provides structured access to GitHub Actions through its built-in MCP server. You can list workflows, inspect run details, download job logs, and analyze failures — all via typed tool calls that return structured data. Claude Code has no GitHub Actions integration whatsoever; debugging CI requires manually navigating the GitHub web UI or parsing raw gh run view output.

When to Use

• A CI pipeline fails and you need to understand why — fast
• Investigating flaky tests across multiple workflow runs
• Auditing workflow run times and usage patterns
• Debugging deployment pipeline failures in staging/production
• Comparing successful vs failed runs to find regressions

Workflow

1. List Workflows in a Repository

Tool: github-mcp-server-actions_list
  method: "list_workflows"
  owner: "my-org"
  repo: "my-app"

2. List Recent Runs for a Workflow

Tool: github-mcp-server-actions_list
  method: "list_workflow_runs"
  owner: "my-org"
  repo: "my-app"
  resource_id: "ci.yml"
  workflow_runs_filter: { "status": "completed", "branch": "main" }

3. Get Failed Job Logs

This is the killer feature — pull logs directly for analysis:

Tool: github-mcp-server-get_job_logs
  owner: "my-org"
  repo: "my-app"
  run_id: 12345678
  failed_only: true
  return_content: true
  tail_lines: 200

4. Inspect a Specific Job

Tool: github-mcp-server-actions_get
  method: "get_workflow_job"
  owner: "my-org"
  repo: "my-app"
  resource_id: "98765432"

5. Check Run Usage and Timing

Tool: github-mcp-server-actions_get
  method: "get_workflow_run_usage"
  owner: "my-org"
  repo: "my-app"
  resource_id: "12345678"

Examples

"Why Did My CI Fail?"

"My latest push to feature/auth-refactor failed CI. Show me what went wrong."

Copilot workflow:

1. list_workflow_runs filtered by branch feature/auth-refactor
2. Takes the most recent failed run
3. list_workflow_jobs to find which job(s) failed
4. get_job_logs with failed_only: true to pull the error output
5. Analyzes the logs, identifies the root cause, suggests a fix