Support for Contributions of Agentic Workflows by brunoborges · Pull Request #786 · github/awesome-copilot

brunoborges · 2026-02-21T01:16:03Z

Summary

Makes this project welcoming to users who want to contribute their own Agentic Workflows — AI-powered repository automations that run coding agents in GitHub Actions, defined in markdown with natural language instructions.

Changes

New workflows/ directory for community-contributed agentic workflows (flat .md files)
Build pipeline integration — metadata parsing, README generation, and website data generation for workflows
CI validation workflow (validate-agentic-workflows-pr.yml) with two jobs:
- Block forbidden files — rejects .yml, .yaml, .lock.yml, and .github/ modifications
- Compile and validate — runs gh aw compile --validate on each workflow .md file
Documentation updates — README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, and AGENTS.md with workflow docs, contributing guidelines, examples, and code review checklists
PR template updated with Agentic Workflow as a contribution type
validate-readme.yml updated to trigger on workflows/** changes

Type of Contribution

New agentic workflow.
Other: Infrastructure to support agentic workflow contributions

Add support for contributing Agentic Workflows — AI-powered repository automations that run coding agents in GitHub Actions, defined in markdown with natural language instructions (https://github.github.com/gh-aw). Changes: - Create workflows/ directory for community-contributed workflows - Add workflow metadata parsing (yaml-parser.mjs) - Add workflow README generation (update-readme.mjs, constants.mjs) - Add workflow data to website generation (generate-website-data.mjs) - Update README.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, and AGENTS.md with workflow docs, contributing guidelines, and code review checklists Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Adds validate-agentic-workflows.yml that runs on PRs touching workflows/. Uses gh-aw CLI setup action to install the compiler, then runs 'gh aw compile --validate' on each workflow .md file. Posts a sticky PR comment with fix instructions on failure. Also adds workflows/** to validate-readme.yml path triggers so README tables are regenerated when workflows change. Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Prevents contributors from pushing compiled YAML (.yml, .yaml, .lock.yml) or .github/ directories into the workflows/ directory. Only .md markdown source files are accepted — compilation happens downstream via gh aw compile. This is a security measure to prevent malicious GitHub Actions code from being introduced through contributed agentic workflows. Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Workflows are now standalone .md files in workflows/ — no subfolders or README.md needed. Each file contains both the metadata frontmatter (name, description, triggers, tags) and the agentic workflow definition (on, permissions, safe-outputs) in a single file. Updated all build scripts, CI workflows, docs, and review checklists. Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Merges the two separate action workflows (block-workflow-yaml.yml and validate-agentic-workflows.yml) into a single validate-agentic-workflows-pr.yml with two jobs: check-forbidden-files runs first, then compile-workflows runs only if the file check passes. Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Copilot

Pull request overview

Adds first-class repository support for community-contributed Agentic Workflows (markdown-defined automations for gh-aw), integrating them into the build/readme generation, website data generation, CI validation, and contribution docs.

Changes:

Introduces a new workflows/ resource type (flat .md files) with metadata parsing and README generation.
Extends website data/search index generation to include workflows and emits workflows.json.
Adds PR-time CI validation for workflow contributions and updates docs/templates to include workflows.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 11 out of 12 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
workflows/.gitkeep	Ensures the new `workflows/` directory exists in git.
eng/yaml-parser.mjs	Adds `parseWorkflowMetadata()` for workflow frontmatter parsing.
eng/update-readme.mjs	Generates `docs/README.workflows.md` via a new workflows section builder.
eng/generate-website-data.mjs	Generates workflows metadata, adds workflows to search index, and writes `workflows.json`.
eng/constants.mjs	Adds `WORKFLOWS_DIR` and new README template snippets for workflows.
docs/README.workflows.md	New generated documentation page for workflows (currently empty state).
README.md	Adds workflows to the main README navigation and repo structure/docs.
CONTRIBUTING.md	Adds contribution guidance and an example workflow file format.
AGENTS.md	Documents workflow file expectations and adds a review checklist for workflows.
.github/workflows/validate-readme.yml	Triggers README validation when `workflows/**` changes.
.github/workflows/validate-agentic-workflows-pr.yml	New CI workflow to block forbidden files and validate workflows with `gh aw compile --validate`.
.github/pull_request_template.md	Adds “agentic workflow” as a contribution type and checklist item.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

.github/workflows/validate-agentic-workflows-pr.yml:112

Same as earlier: commenting on PRs from forks will usually fail under pull_request due to missing write permissions. Please guard this step with a permission check (like validate-readme.yml does) so validation failures still surface without the workflow erroring while trying to comment.

      - name: Comment on PR if compilation failed
        if: failure()
        uses: marocchino/sticky-pull-request-comment@v2
        with:
          header: workflow-validation

Copilot · 2026-02-21T01:19:36Z

eng/yaml-parser.mjs

+      // Extract triggers from frontmatter if present
+      const triggers = frontmatter.triggers || [];
+
+      return {
+        name: frontmatter.name,
+        description: frontmatter.description,
+        triggers,
+        tags: frontmatter.tags || [],
+        path: filePath,


frontmatter.triggers is treated as an array downstream (e.g., .length/.join() in README generation and .forEach() in website data). If a contributor provides a scalar (e.g., triggers: schedule) this will throw at build time. Normalize/validate here (e.g., Array.isArray(frontmatter.triggers) ? frontmatter.triggers : []) and consider warning when the type is invalid.

@copilot open a new pull request to apply changes based on this feedback

Copilot · 2026-02-21T01:19:36Z

.github/workflows/validate-agentic-workflows-pr.yml

+          # Check for YAML/lock files in workflows/ and any .github/ modifications
+          forbidden=$(git diff --name-only --diff-filter=ACM origin/${{ github.base_ref }}...HEAD -- \
+            'workflows/**/*.yml' \
+            'workflows/**/*.yaml' \
+            'workflows/**/*.lock.yml' \
+            '.github/*' \
+            '.github/**')


The forbidden-file check relies on origin/${{ github.base_ref }}...HEAD and --diff-filter=ACM. In Actions this ref can be missing/ambiguous depending on checkout mode, and the filter also ignores deletions/renames. Consider diffing ${{ github.event.pull_request.base.sha }}...${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha }} (or ${{ github.event.pull_request.base.sha }}...${{ github.sha }}) and either removing --diff-filter or including D/R so forbidden deletions/renames are also caught. Also, this currently only blocks *.yml/*.yaml/*.lock.yml under workflows/**; the PR description says all such files should be rejected for workflow contributions—please align implementation and docs.

@copilot open a new pull request to apply changes based on this feedback

Copilot · 2026-02-21T01:19:37Z

.github/workflows/validate-agentic-workflows-pr.yml

+      - name: Comment on PR
+        if: failure()
+        uses: marocchino/sticky-pull-request-comment@v2
+        with:


This PR-commenting step runs unconditionally on failure, but pull_request workflows from forks typically don't have permission to write PR comments, which will make the job fail noisily. Mirror the pattern used in validate-readme.yml (gate on github.event.pull_request.head.repo.permissions.push == true, and otherwise log the message to the workflow output).

This issue also appears on line 108 of the same file.

@copilot open a new pull request to apply changes based on this feedback

Copilot · 2026-02-21T01:19:37Z

.github/workflows/validate-agentic-workflows-pr.yml

+        uses: actions/checkout@v4
+
+      - name: Install gh-aw CLI
+        uses: github/gh-aw/actions/setup-cli@main


github/gh-aw/actions/setup-cli@main is a moving ref. Pin to a tagged release or a commit SHA to reduce supply-chain risk and improve reproducibility of CI runs.

Suggested change

uses: github/gh-aw/actions/setup-cli@main

uses: github/gh-aw/actions/setup-cli@v1.0.0

@aaronpowell are we ok with using main from a GitHub Inc. maintained action?

brunoborges and others added 6 commits February 20, 2026 17:09

Add Agentic Workflow option to PR template

e470afe

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings February 21, 2026 01:16

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of brunoborges February 21, 2026 01:16 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Feb 21, 2026

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Support for Contributions of Agentic Workflows#786

Support for Contributions of Agentic Workflows#786
brunoborges wants to merge 6 commits intogithub:stagedfrom
brunoborges:agentic-workflows-staged

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	uses: github/gh-aw/actions/setup-cli@main
	uses: github/gh-aw/actions/setup-cli@v1.0.0

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brunoborges commented Feb 21, 2026

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