CI Health Check: a /ci Skill for Claude Code

By Hudson Atwell, GBTI Network Member. Originally published on

Claude Code loads any markdown file at .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md

as a reusable slash command (a "skill"). This one gives your agent a /ci

command that audits your GitHub Actions: a red/green health board, real failure triage, a post-push watcher, and a living inventory of what every workflow does.

It exists because agents (and humans) keep re-deriving the same motions every time CI goes red: which runs failed, how to actually get the logs, whether the failure is your commit or something that was already broken. The skill encodes those motions once, including a few non-obvious gh

behaviors that cost me real debugging time.

.claude/skills/ci/

in your repo..claude/skills/ci/SKILL.md

./ci

(or /ci health check

) in Claude Code.Requires the gh

CLI authenticated against your repo. The skill runs from the project folder, so the repo is already known: gh

resolves it from the working directory, and the {owner}/{repo}

tokens in API paths are native gh api

placeholders it fills in for you. Nothing to configure.

---
name: ci
description: ">"
  Inspect and diagnose this repo's GitHub Actions CI. Invoke for "/ci", "/ci health", "/ci health check",
  "/ci watch", "/ci schedule", "/ci diagnose <run-id>", "/ci list", or when the user asks whether CI is
  green, why a workflow failed, or what a workflow does. Pulls recent runs with gh, downloads failed job
  logs the reliable way, and triages failures to their real root cause.
---


All commands run from the repo root with the `gh` CLI (it resolves the repo from the working directory;
`{owner}/{repo}` in API paths is a native gh placeholder). Default action when none is named: `health`.

## Tooling lore (read first)

- **Fetching logs:** `gh run view <id> --log-failed` often returns NOTHING. The reliable recipe:
  ``` bash
  JOB=$(gh run view <run-id> --json jobs -q '.jobs[0].databaseId')
  gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/jobs/$JOB/logs > /tmp/job.log

Then grep the file; strip the timestamp column with cut -c30- when quoting. Multi-job runs: iterate .jobs[] and pick by .conclusion == "failure". Step-level status without logs: gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/runs/<id>/jobs -q '.jobs[0].steps[] | .name + " " + .conclusion'.

• Scheduled-failure attribution: the failure email for a SCHEDULED workflow cites the LATEST main sha, which is often NOT the commit that broke it. Always check gh run list --workflow <file> --limit 5 --json conclusion,createdAt,event first; if the failures predate the cited commit, it is a standing provisioning or external problem, not a regression.
• Secrets vs variables: repo secrets via gh secret list, plain variables via gh variable list. A workflow reading secrets.X where X was never created gets an EMPTY string, not an error, so the symptom is a downstream "not set" message, a 401, or an empty env var in the step header.
• Setting secrets may be gated: an agent session may be blocked from gh secret set by permission policy. Prepare the value in a local untracked file and hand the human the one command.

Failure triage (a starting taxonomy — extend it to fit the project) #

Classify every red into a named bucket, because the bucket decides the response. These three cover most repos; add project-specific buckets as you meet them (examples: environment/toolchain drift, a dependency or upstream API regression, resource exhaustion such as OOM or disk or rate limits, data- or state-dependent failures, expired credentials). When a failure fits no bucket, name a new one in the report rather than forcing it into a wrong response.

1. Broken by commit: the failure starts at a specific sha and the log implicates changed files. Fix the root cause (see Fix discipline below); verify with a rerun on the fix commit.
2. Provisioning gap: missing or empty secret, unset variable, an external account not configured. Route to the human with the exact command; do not retry.
3. Flaky / external: network hiccup, provider outage, rate limit; the same job passed before and after without a related change. gh run rerun <id> --failed once, then re-check.

Fix discipline (failing tests especially) #

When a test fails, evaluate the REAL defect the test is exposing and propose a fix for that root cause. Never patch the symptom, and never modify a test so it passes while the underlying failure remains — if you find yourself weakening an assertion, deleting a case, or special-casing the test input, stop and re-derive what the test was protecting. Changing a test is only correct when the test itself is wrong about the intended behavior, and the report must say that explicitly and justify it. The same rule generalizes beyond tests: a fix that makes the red go away without explaining WHY it was red is a symptom patch, not a fix.

Actions #

/ci health [N] (also: /ci health check; the default)

1. gh run list --limit ${N:-30} --json databaseId,workflowName,conclusion,headSha,event,createdAt and group by workflow. Report a red/green board: latest conclusion per workflow, streak (consecutive fails), and the event (push vs schedule).
2. For each currently-red workflow: pull its recent history (--workflow <file> --limit 5) to date the breakage, download the failed job log (recipe above), and triage it (the taxonomy above) with a one-line root cause and the proposed fix.
3. End with the board, the diagnoses, and what to do next. Offer to make low-risk code-side fixes (root cause, per Fix discipline); provisioning gaps go to the human.

/ci watch

The post-push ritual. Find the runs for the current HEAD and watch until all conclude:

SHA=$(git rev-parse HEAD)
gh run list --limit 15 --json databaseId,workflowName,conclusion,headSha \
  -q ".[] | select(.headSha==\"$SHA\")"
gh run watch <id> --exit-status   # per unfinished run

Report each result; diagnose any red as in health.

/ci drift (only if your repo commits build artifacts)

The LOCAL pre-push check that committed artifacts match their source:

<your full artifact build command(s)>
git diff --name-only -- <artifact-dir-1> <artifact-dir-2>

Empty diff = safe to push. Non-empty = stage those files with the commit that changed the source. Fill in EVERY build command: partial rebuilds that skip one artifact are the classic way this check reds your main branch anyway.

/ci schedule

Staleness audit of the scheduled workflows. For each one (list yours here with cadences): pull the last 5 runs and report the last SUCCESS date. Alarm on any workflow whose last success is older than 2x its cadence. A scheduled job can be silently red for days; nobody rereads yesterday's failure email. Note which scheduled jobs are load-bearing (a backup, a data sync something else depends on) so staleness there is escalated, not just listed.

/ci diagnose <run-id | workflow-name>

Deep-dive one run (or the latest run of a named workflow): step table, failed job log to disk, triage bucket, root cause, fix proposal.

/ci rerun <run-id>

gh run rerun <run-id> --failed then watch it. Only for the flaky/external bucket; never rerun a provisioning gap (it cannot pass) or a broken-by-commit red (fix the root cause first).

/ci list

Print this workflow inventory (keep it current when workflows are added or changed):

To seed it, read every file in .github/workflows/ and summarize: name, trigger, the job's purpose (the header comment usually says), and which secrets it reads.

Reporting conventions #

• Lead with the board (workflow, latest state, streak), then diagnoses, then actions taken or proposed.

There is nothing to configure for the repo itself: `gh`

infers it from the working directory, so the skill works the moment you drop it in. Only two parts are inherently repo-specific:

`.github/workflows/`

and then treat it as living documentation. This is the part future sessions (and new contributors) thank you for.And treat the failure taxonomy as a starting point, not a fixed set: projects fail in project-shaped ways, so add the buckets yours actually produces.

Each lore item is a real failure mode: `--log-failed`

silently returning nothing while the jobs API works; a scheduled backup that failed for four days while its failure emails blamed whatever commit happened to be newest on main; a workflow reading a secret nobody ever created and reporting it as a vague downstream error instead of failing fast; a drift check that stayed red because the rebuild command regenerated only one of two committed bundles. The Fix discipline section is there because agents notoriously "fix" a failing test by editing the test — the classification buckets plus that rule keep the agent from the three classic wastes: rerunning a job that can never pass, "fixing" code that was never broken, and silencing a test that was telling the truth.