debugging-workflows

A guide for finding and diagnosing failed GitHub Agentic Workflows, which are automated tasks that run through GitHub Actions.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to download workflow logs, inspect specific runs, audit execution, and trace common failures.
Why use it?
It helps you understand what happened when an automated workflow fails, instead of searching through raw run data by hand.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/github/gh-aw/debugging-workflows
Any agent
npx skills add github/gh-aw --skill debugging-workflows
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/github/gh-aw

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 20 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,294 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00020 $0.03294
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.01647
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00659
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00329

Measured 2d ago against content hash 495063fa9c09, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

debugging-workflows scanned grade B with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Reads MCP configurationmediumAgent snooping

mcp.json carries server URLs and auth tokens; reading it lets a mod discover and abuse other integrations.

| `gh aw mcp inspect <workflow>` | Inspect MCP configuration |
.github/skills/debugging-workflows/SKILL.md · 530 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 530 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Debugging GitHub Agentic Workflows

Use this guide to debug GitHub Agentic Workflows: download and analyze logs, audit runs, and trace workflow behavior.

Table of Contents

Quick Start

Download Logs from Recent Runs

# Download logs from the last 24 hours
gh aw logs --start-date -1d -o /tmp/workflow-logs

# Download logs for a specific workflow
gh aw logs weekly-research --start-date -1d

# Download logs with JSON output for programmatic analysis
gh aw logs --json

Audit a Specific Run

# Audit by run ID
gh aw audit 1234567890

# Audit from a GitHub Actions URL
gh aw audit https://github.com/owner/repo/actions/runs/1234567890

# Audit with JSON output
gh aw audit 1234567890 --json

Downloading Workflow Logs

The gh aw logs command downloads workflow run artifacts and logs from GitHub Actions for analysis.

Basic Usage

# Download logs for all workflows (last 10 runs)
gh aw logs

# Download logs for a specific workflow
gh aw logs <workflow-name>

# Download with custom output directory
gh aw logs -o ./my-logs

Filter Options

# Filter by date range
gh aw logs --start-date 2024-01-01 --end-date 2024-01-31
gh aw logs --start-date -1w                    # Last week
gh aw logs --start-date -1mo                   # Last month

# Filter by AI engine
gh aw logs --engine copilot
gh aw logs --engine claude
gh aw logs --engine codex

# Filter by count
gh aw logs -c 5                                # Last 5 runs

# Filter by branch/tag
gh aw logs --ref main
gh aw logs --ref feature-xyz

# Filter by run ID range
gh aw logs --after-run-id 1000 --before-run-id 2000

# Filter firewall-enabled runs
gh aw logs --firewall                          # Only firewall-enabled
gh aw logs --no-firewall                       # Only non-firewall

Read the full file on GitHub · 530 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 530 lines · 20 tokens per session scan B 495063fa9c09

Subscribe to this mod's changes

debugging-workflows is a skill published in the GitHub repository github/gh-aw (5,050 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 3,294 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (reads mcp configuration). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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