GitHub Agentic Workflows
github.github.ioI noticed this unusual line in go.mod and got curious why it is using replace for this (typically you would `go get github.com/Masterminds/semver/v3@v3.4.0` instead).
replace github.com/Masterminds/semver/v3 => github.com/Masterminds/semver/v3 v3.4.0
There is just so much going wrong here.
Github should focus on getting their core offerings in shape first.
I stopped using GH actions when I ran into this issue: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/151956#discuss...
That was almost a year ago and to this date I still get updates of people falling into the same issue.
Ah, the critical problem dilemma. Some percentage of free users become paid users, but the free users take up an unreasonable amount of your time/energy/support.
The solution seems simple. Buy their product.
I don't follow, we pay them for the actions and everything and still ran into this issue.
That's why it's an issue.
Well, this behavior makes sense. They're a bluechip trying to maintain the illusion that theyre a growth stock juuuust a little bit longer.
This reminds me slightly of some copilot nonsense I get. I don’t use copilot. Every few days when I’m on the GitHub homepage the copilot chat input (which I don’t want on my homepage anyway) tells me it’s disabled because I’ve used up my monthly limit of copilot.
I literally do not use it, and no my account isn’t compromised. Trying to trick people into paying? Seems cartoonishly stupid but…
Alternative, less phishy link: https://github.com/github/gh-aw
This is on GitHub's official account. For some reason GitHub is deploying this on GitHub pages without a different domain?
This is a github pages feature. Given an account with the name "example", they can publish static pages to example.github.io
So this being from github.github.io implies it's published by the "github" account on github.
Why would that be phishy? They own the GitHub org on GitHub, hence github.github.io. I always thought it was a neat recursive/dogfood type thing even if not really that deep. Like when Reddit had /r/reddit.com or twitter having @twitter
When they launched github.io, they said it was for user-generated content, and official stuff will be on github.com. Seemingly that's changed/they forgot, but users seems to have remembered. Microsoft isn't famous for their consistency, so not unexpected exactly.
I’m pretty sure they have used it before, or maybe it was githubnext. I’m also pretty sure I have seen many large companies and organizations launch developer facing tools and stuff through GitHub pages. The structure of GitHub pages is pretty simple. You know the user/org from the domain. I’m still not sure what’s phishy about it. Is it a broken promise?
It's phishy because it's breaks the rules people are generally told for avoiding phishing links, mainly that they should pay attention to the domain rather than subdomains. Browser even highlight that part specifically so that you pay attention to it, because you can't fake the real domain. The problem with what GitHub does here is that while `github.github.io` might be the real GitHub, `foobar-github.github.io` is not because anybody can get a github.io via their username, that was part of why they made github.io separate. Additionally they could easily host this via GitHub Pages but still use a custom domain back to github.com, they just don't.
I would say that GitHub is particularly bad about this as they also use `github.blog` for announcements. I'm not sure if they have any others, but then that's the problem, you can't expect people to magically know which of your different domains are and aren't real if you use more than one. They even announced the github.com SSH key change on github.blog.
Looks like a pre-release product. This is to lower the branding and reputational risk.
So them using their own product makes it phishy? I don’t get it
It’s not like someone else can or could own this link, could they?
Stuffing agents somewhere they don't belong rather than making the system work better with the agents people already use. Obvious marketing driven cash grab.
This is a solid step forward on execution safety for agentic workflows. Permissions, sandboxing, MCP allowlists, and output sanitization all matter. But the harder, still unsolved problem is decision validation, not execution constraints. Most real failures come from agents doing authorized but wrong things with high confidence. Hallucinations, shallow agreement, or optimizing for speed while staying inside the permission box.
I’m working on an open source project called consensus-tools that sits above systems like this and focuses on that gap. Agents do not just act, they stake on decisions. Multiple agents or agents plus humans evaluate actions independently, and bad decisions have real cost. This reduces guessing, slows risky actions, and forces higher confidence for security sensitive decisions. Execution answers what an agent can do. Consensus answers how sure we are that it should do it.
I want to see where we're at in 2 years, because these last couple of months have been pretty chaotic (but in a good sense) in terms of agents doing things with other agents. I think this is the real wake-up-call, that these dumb and error-prone agents can do self-correcting teamwork, which they will hopefully do for us.
Two years, then we'll know if and how this industry has completely been revolutionized.
By then we'd probably have an AGI emulator, emulated through agents.
The landing page doesn't make it clear to me what value this is providing to me (as a user). I see all of these things that I can theoretically do, but I don't see (1) actual examples of those things (2) how this specific agentic workflow helps.
I’d appreciate if they fix the log viewer in GH actions. That would have a larger impact, by far.
I feel like this solution hallucinated the concept of Workflow Lock File (.lock.yml), which is not available in Github Actions. This is a missing feature that would solve the security risk of changing git tag references when calling to actions like utility@v1
I think in this context they mean “lock” as in “these are the generated contents corresponding to your source markdown,” not as in “this is a lockfile.” But I think that’s a pretty confusing overlap for them to have introduced, given that a lack of strong dependency pinning is a significant ongoing pain point in GHA.
You can already hardcode the sha of a given workflow in the ref, and arguably should do that anyways.
You can also configure a policy for it [0] and there are many oss tools for auto converting your workflow into a pinned hash ones. I guess OP is upset it’s not in gh CLI? Maybe a valid feature to have there even if it’s just a nicety
[0] https://github.blog/changelog/2025-08-15-github-actions-poli...
It doesn't work for transitive dependencies, so you're reliant on third party composite actions doing their own SHA locking.
I find this confusing: I can see the value in having an LLM assist you in developing a CI/CD workflow, but why would you want one involved in any continuous degree with your CI/CD? Perhaps it’s not as bad as that given that there’s a “compilation” phase, but the value add there isn’t super clear either (why would I check in both the markdown and the generated workflow; should I always regenerate from the markdown when I need changes, etc.).
Given GitHub’s already lackluster reputation around security in GHA, I think I’d like to see them address some of GHA’s fundamental weaknesses before layering additional abstractions atop it.
I thought that it was to allow non-tech people to start making their own workflows/CI in a no/low-code way and compete against successful companies on this market.
But the implementation is comically awful.
Sure, you can "just write natural language" instructions and hope for the best.
But they couldn't fully get away from their old demons and you still have to pay the YAML tax to set the necessary guardrails.
I can't help but laugh at their example: https://github.com/github/gh-aw?tab=readme-ov-file#how-it-wo...
They wrote 16 words in Markdown and... 19 in YAML.
Because you can't trust the agent, you still have to write tons on gibberish YAML.
I'm trying to understand it, but first you give permissions, here they only provide read permissions.
And then give output permissions, which are actually write permissions on a smaller scope than the previous ones.
Obviously they also absolve themselves from anything wrong that could happen by telling users to be careful.
And they also suggest to setup an egress firewall to avoid the agents being too loose: https://github.com/github/gh-aw-firewall
Why setting-up an actual workflow engine on an infra managed by IT with actual security tooling when you can just stick together a few bits of YAML and Markdown on Github, right?
I use an LLM behavior test to see if the semantic responses from LLMs using my MCP server match what I expect them to. This is beyond the regex tests, but to see if there's a semantic response that's appropriate. Sometimes the LLMs kick back an unusual response that technically is a no, but effectively is a yes. Different models can behave semantically different too.
If I had a nice CI/CD workflow that was built into GitHub rather than rolling my own that I have running locally, that might just make it a little more automatic and a little easier.
> but why would you want one involved in any continuous degree with your CI/CD
because helping you isn't the goal
the goal is to generate revenue by consuming tokens
and a never ending swarm of "AI" "agents" is a fantastic way to do that
> I find this confusing: I can see the value in having an LLM assist you in developing a CI/CD workflow, but why would you want one involved in any continuous degree with your CI/CD?
The sensible case for this is for delivering human-facing project documentation, not actual code. (E.g. ask the AI agent to write its own "code review" report after looking at recent commits.) It's implemented using CI/CD solutions under the hood, but not real CI/CD.
Sorry, maybe I phrased my original comment poorly: I agree there's value in that kind of "self" code-review or other agent-driven workflow; I'm less clear on how that value is produced (performantly, reliably, etc.) by the architecture described on the site.
This is an extension for the gh cli that takes markdown files as input and creates github actions workflow files from them. Not just any workflow files, but 1000-line beasts that you'll need an LLM to explain what they do.
I tried out `gh aw init` and hit Y at the wrong prompt. It created a COPILOT_GITHUB_TOKEN on the github repo I happened to be in presumably with a token from my account. That's something that really should have an extra confirmation.
It looks like it does have an MCP Gateway https://github.com/github/gh-aw-mcpg so I may see how well it works with my MCP server. One of the components mine makes are agent elements with my own permissioning, security, memory, and skills. I put explicit programatic hard stops on my agents if they do something that is dangerous or destructive.
As for the domain, this is the same account that has been hosting Github projects for more than a decade. Pretty sure it is legit. Org ID is 9,919 from 2008.
Does this products directly compete with GitHub Models [1]?
I think it makes use of GitHub models.
Somehow i want to ask what's the actual job of those former software engineers. Agents everywhere, on your local machine, in the pipeline, on the servers, and they are doing everything. Yes, the specs also.
Someone still has orchestrate the shit show. Like a captain at the helm in the middle of a storm.
Or you can be full accelerationist and give an agent the role of standing up all the agents. But then you need someone with the job of being angry when they get a $7000 cloud bill.
What is the job of a truck driver, if it's the truck that delivers goods?
Surely this won't be a security nightmare.
Don't worry, you can just setup an Agentic Workflow Firewall!
Link to github.com: https://github.github.com/gh-aw/
GitHub fix your uptime then come talk to me about agentic workflows
since generation is not deterministic, how do they verify the lock file?
The generation of the workflow file from the input markdown file is deterministic. It's what the agent does when running the workflow that is non-deterministic.
Soon: AgentHub Git Workflows
Copilot Hub Enterprise With Copilot
At which point the AI figures out its easier to just switch to jj
WorkHub Agent Gitflows?
Ah yes, lovely. That's what I want in my CI/CD...hallucinations that then churn through I don't know how many tokens trying to "fix it".
Go: check
YAML: check
Markdown: check
Wrong level of abstraction: check
Shit slop which will be irrelevant in less than a year time: check
Manager was not PIP'd: check
Not confirmed that it's by Github, phishy domain.
Very weird of them to not use github.com but instead use the domain they otherwise use for non-github/user content. Phishy indeed, and then people/companies go ahead and blame users for not taking care/checking, yet banks and more continuously deploy stuff in a way to train users to disregard those things.
Why is it phishy? Github.io has been the domain they use for all GH pages for a long time with subdomains mapping to GH usernames. It’s standard practice to separate user generated content from the main domain so that it doesn’t poison SEO.
Agreed, but looks like it: https://github.com/github/gh-aw
How is it not confirmed? GitHub cannot use their own product? Them using GitHub pages changes something? I don’t get it