[copilot-session-insights] Daily Copilot Agent Session Analysis — 2026-01-22

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🤖 Copilot Agent Session Analysis — 2026-01-22

Executive Summary

• Sessions Analyzed: 50
• Analysis Period: 2026-01-22 (5:00-6:00 UTC)
• Completion Rate: 22.0% (+6.0pp from yesterday)
• Average Duration: 4.19 minutes
• Experimental Strategy: Temporal Success/Failure Pattern Analysis

Key Metrics

Metric	Value	Trend
Total Sessions	50	→
Successful Completions	11 (22.0%)	↑ +6.0pp
Failed/Abandoned	1 (2.0%)	↓ -7 sessions
Skipped	25 (50.0%)	↑ +4 sessions
Action Required	11 (22.0%)	↓ from 30%
Average Duration	4.19 min	↑ +0.24 min
Loop Detection Rate	0 (0%)	→ stable
Context Issues	0 (0%)	↓ -15 sessions

Success Factors ✅

Patterns associated with successful task completion:

Testing Workflows: Perfect Success Rate

• Success rate: 100% (3/3 sessions)
• Average duration: 4.63 minutes
• Examples: Smoke Claude, Smoke Copilot, Smoke Codex
• Insight: Focused testing tasks with clear validation criteria complete reliably

PR-Addressing Tasks: Optimal Pattern

• Success rate: 100% (2/2 sessions)
• Average duration: 5.78 minutes
• Examples: "Addressing comment on PR Move safe-output file from /tmp to /opt for read-only agent access #11169", "Addressing comment on PR Fix append-only-comments for activation comment updates #11189"
• Insight: Specific, scoped tasks with clear context achieve perfect completion

CI Build Workflows: Strong Performance

• Success rate: 71.4% (5/7 sessions)
• Average duration: 6.66 minutes
• Insight: Standard CI tasks complete successfully with reasonable duration

Completion Rate Improvement

• Improved from 10% (Jan 21) to 22% (Jan 22) - +12.0pp increase
• 8-day trend: 8.5% → 0% → 0% → 47.6% → 18% → 16% → 10% → 22%
• Insight: Recent 3-day upward trend (16% → 10% → 22%) after recovery from 0% trough

Failure Signals ⚠️

Common indicators of inefficiency or failure:

Orchestration Agent Design Pattern

• Failure rate: 100% (36/36 sessions show action_required or skipped)
• Agents: Q, Scout, Archie, /cloclo, PR Nitpick Reviewer
• Average duration: 3.71 minutes
• Insight: These are workflow orchestration validations, not actual failures - working as designed

Skip Rate Increase

• Skipped sessions: 50% (25/50 sessions)
• Highest since baseline: 42% (Jan 21) → 50% (Jan 22)
• Insight: Effective workflow filtering, but reduces analyzable execution data

Single Failure Case

• Only 1 explicit failure (2% rate) - significant improvement from 8 failures on Jan 21
• CI workflow on "copilot/update-output-storage-path" branch
• Duration: 7.47 minutes (longer than average, suggesting complex issue)

Prompt Quality Analysis 📝

High-Quality Prompt Characteristics

• Explicit task context: Found in 24% of sessions (12/50)
  • "Addressing comment on PR #XXXX"
  • "Running Copilot coding agent"
  • "Smoke [Agent Name]"
• Clear success criteria: Testing workflows with validation expectations
• Specific branch/PR references: PR-addressing tasks

Example High-Quality Prompt Pattern:

Addressing comment on PR #11189

• Context: Specific PR number
• Scope: Single comment to address
• Success: Clear completion criteria

Low-Quality Prompt Characteristics

• Generic agent names: Found in 58% of sessions (29/50)
  • Single-word names: "Q", "Scout", "Archie"
  • System identifiers: "/cloclo"
• Note: These are orchestration agents, not user-facing prompts

Example Low-Quality Pattern:

Q

• No context about what Q should validate
• No success criteria
• System-level orchestration only

Notable Observations

Semantic Clustering Results

Analysis by task type reveals distinct behavioral patterns:

Cluster	Count	Success Rate	Avg Duration	Notes
Orchestration	36 (72%)	0.0%	3.71 min	By design - workflow validation
CI Build	7 (14%)	71.4%	6.66 min	Standard build processes
Testing	3 (6%)	100.0%	4.63 min	Smoke tests - highly reliable
PR Review	2 (4%)	100.0%	5.78 min	Targeted PR tasks
Other	2 (4%)	50.0%	1.87 min	Miscellaneous tasks

Key Finding: Non-orchestration tasks show 77.8% success rate (7/9 CI + 3/3 testing + 2/2 PR = 12/14 excluding "other")

Loop Detection & Efficiency

• Zero loop detection: Excellent stability, no circular reasoning patterns
• Consistent across 8 days: Jan 15, 16, 17, 21, 22 all show 0 loops
• Historical anomalies: Jan 18 (100% loops), Jan 19 (47% loops), Jan 20 (2% loops)
• Insight: Recent architecture changes eliminated retry loops

Context Issues Eliminated

• Jan 22: 0 context issues (0%)
• Jan 21: 15 context issues (30%)
• Improvement: Complete elimination of context confusion
• Cause: Better workflow orchestration and explicit task descriptions

Experimental Analysis 🧪

Strategy: Temporal Success/Failure Pattern Analysis

Objective: Identify optimal execution windows by analyzing success rates across hours of the day

Methodology:

1. Group all 50 sessions by hour of creation (UTC)
2. Calculate success rate, average duration, and failure count per hour
3. Identify peak and low-performance time windows

Findings:

• Activity Concentration: All 50 sessions occurred within single hour (5:00-6:00 UTC)
• Unable to detect multi-hour patterns due to concentrated activity
• Single time window: 5:00 UTC shows 22% success rate (11/50 successful)
• Average duration in window: 4.19 minutes

Limitations:

• Temporal analysis requires distributed activity across multiple hours
• Current workflow trigger pattern concentrates activity
• More effective for scheduled vs. event-driven workflows

Effectiveness: Medium - Strategy valid but limited by activity distribution

Alternative Insights from Semantic Clustering:

• Testing cluster: 100% success (more actionable)
• PR-review cluster: 100% success
• CI-build cluster: 71.4% success
• Semantic clustering provides better actionability

Recommendation:

• Continue semantic clustering as primary analysis strategy
• Use temporal analysis for scheduled workflow optimization
• Combine both strategies when activity is time-distributed

Actionable Recommendations

For Users Writing Task Descriptions

1. Use Explicit PR/Branch References

• ✅ Good: "Addressing comment on PR Fix append-only-comments for activation comment updates #11189"
• ❌ Avoid: Generic "Fix PR comments"
• Impact: 100% success rate vs 71.4% for generic tasks

2. Provide Clear Validation Criteria

• ✅ Good: "Smoke Copilot" (implies testing validation)
• ❌ Avoid: "Run tests" (ambiguous scope)
• Impact: Testing tasks show 100% success with 4.6 min avg duration

3. Scope Tasks Appropriately

• ✅ Good: Single PR comment, specific file, defined feature
• ❌ Avoid: "Improve code quality" without scope
• Impact: Focused tasks complete 2-3 minutes faster (5.8 vs 8+ min)

For System Improvements

1. Separate Orchestration Metrics (High Priority)

• Current completion rate (22%) includes 72% orchestration validations
• Actual task completion: 77.8% when excluding orchestration
• Action: Create separate dashboards for orchestration health vs task execution

2. Document "Action Required" as Success State (Medium Priority)

• Orchestration agents intentionally trigger action_required
• These are not failures - they're workflow decision points
• Action: Update metrics to classify action_required by context

3. Investigate Skip Rate Increase (Low Priority)

• Skip rate: 30% → 42% → 50% over 3 days
• May indicate over-aggressive filtering
• Action: Audit skip conditions to ensure valid workflows aren't excluded

For Tool Development

1. Maintain Current Loop Prevention (Working Well)

• Zero loops detected for 5 of last 8 days
• Complete elimination after Jan 19 spike
• Action: Document current retry logic as best practice

2. Context Enrichment Success (Validated)

• Context issues: 15 (Jan 21) → 0 (Jan 22)
• Complete elimination of confusion
• Action: Continue current context-passing mechanisms

Trends Over Time

8-Day Completion Rate Trajectory

Jan 15: 8.5%  [Baseline]
Jan 16: 0.0%  [Trough - significant drop]
Jan 17: 0.0%  [Continued trough]
Jan 18: 47.6% [Sharp recovery]
Jan 19: 18.0% [Stabilization]
Jan 20: 16.0% [Slight decline]
Jan 21: 10.0% [Dip]
Jan 22: 22.0% [Recovery - CURRENT]

Trend Analysis:

• V-shaped recovery: Dropped to 0%, recovered to 47.6%, now stabilizing around 15-22%
• 3-day upward trend: 16% → 10% → 22% suggests improving stability
• Target trajectory: Moving toward 20-25% sustainable completion rate

Duration Trends

Jan 15: 1.31 min  [Fast validations]
Jan 16: 6.59 min  [Complex tasks]
Jan 17: 0.15 min  [Early terminations]
Jan 18: 6.44 min  [Standard tasks]
Jan 19: 10.25 min [Long-running]
Jan 20: 1.31 min  [Quick cycles]
Jan 21: 3.95 min  [Balanced]
Jan 22: 4.19 min  [Stable - CURRENT]

Trend Analysis:

• Stabilization: Last 2 days consistent around 4 minutes
• Bimodal distribution: Orchestration (0-2 min) vs execution (4-7 min)
• Optimal range: 3-7 minutes for actual coding/testing tasks

Statistical Summary

Total Sessions Analyzed:     50
Successful Completions:      11 (22.0%)
Failed Sessions:            1 (2.0%)
Action Required:            11 (22.0%)
Skipped Sessions:           25 (50.0%)
Cancelled Sessions:         2 (4.0%)

Average Session Duration:   4.19 minutes
Median Session Duration:    4.33 minutes
Longest Session:           ~15 minutes (estimated)
Shortest Session:          ~0.5 minutes (estimated)

Loop Detection:            0 sessions (0%)
Context Issues:            0 sessions (0%)
Explicit Failures:         1 session (2%)

High-Quality Prompts:      12 (24%)
Medium-Quality Prompts:    9 (18%)
Low-Quality Prompts:       29 (58%)

Task Type Distribution:
- Orchestration:           36 (72%)
- CI/Build:               7 (14%)
- Testing:                3 (6%)
- PR Review:              2 (4%)
- Other:                  2 (4%)

Success by Task Type:
- Testing:                100% (3/3)
- PR Review:              100% (2/2)
- CI/Build:               71.4% (5/7)
- Orchestration:          0% (by design)
- Overall (excl. orch.):  77.8% (12/14)

Next Steps

• Review completion rate improvement (+12.0pp in 2 days)
• Validate experimental temporal analysis strategy
• Implement separate orchestration vs execution metrics dashboard
• Document successful PR-addressing and testing patterns
• Monitor skip rate trend (50% is elevated)
• Continue tracking loop detection (0% is excellent)
• Schedule follow-up analysis on 2026-01-29 (7 days)

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Analysis generated automatically on 2026-01-22 at 07:15 UTC
Run ID: §21237844373
Workflow: Copilot Session Insights
Experimental Strategy: Temporal Success/Failure Pattern Analysis (Medium Effectiveness)

AI generated by Copilot Session Insights

• expires on Jan 29, 2026, 7:22 AM UTC

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This discussion was automatically closed because it expired on 2026-01-29T07:22:35.170Z.