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Failed review agent runs should update the status comment on the PR #837

@fullsend-ai-retro

Description

@fullsend-ai-retro

What happened

When PR #825 was opened, the post-run-link job posted a comment: "fullsend review is working on this — view logs". The dispatched review agent then crashed (run 25743433407), but the status comment was never updated. The PR showed an optimistic "working on this" message for 2.5 hours until a human closed it, with no indication that the review had failed.

What could go better

The current architecture has a gap: the post-run-link job runs in the source repo and posts a comment before the dispatched agent completes. If the agent fails, there's no callback to update the comment. This creates a confusing UX — contributors see "working on this" and wait for a review that will never arrive. Confidence: HIGH — this is a structural gap in the dispatch-and-forget model.

Proposed change

Add a failure callback mechanism. Options:

  1. Post-agent status update: The review workflow in .fullsend should post a comment (or update the existing one) on the target PR when the agent fails. The review token already has write access to the target repo. Add a post-run or always() step in review.yml that posts failure status back to the PR.

  2. Polling from the source repo: Add a follow-up job in fullsend.yaml that waits for the dispatched workflow to complete and updates the status comment. This is more complex and less preferred.

Option 1 is simpler — add an if: failure() step in the review workflow's job that posts a comment like "Review agent encountered an error — view logs" to the target PR.

Validation criteria

The next time a review agent fails on a PR, a comment should appear on the PR within 5 minutes indicating the failure and linking to the run logs. The "working on this" comment should not be the last agent communication on a failed review.


Generated by retro agent from #825

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