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[agent-perf] Systemic: duplicate issue creation — agents filing identical issues in same run #38842

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Description

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Problem

On 2026-06-12, issues #38793 and #38794 were filed with identical titles and bodies, 2 seconds apart, by an automated agent workflow. This is a clear race-condition / missing-deduplication pattern in the Workflow Health Monitor or Failure Investigator agent.

Evidence

Issue Title Created
#38793 [aw] Code Simplifier: 4-day persistent failure streak — needs root-cause fix (P1) 2026-06-12T06:17:39Z
#38794 [aw] Code Simplifier: 4-day persistent failure streak — needs root-cause fix (P1) 2026-06-12T06:17:41Z

Both issues contain identical bodies. Prior runs also noted this risk when #aw_cs4d temporary ID was introduced but deduplication was not enforced.

Root Cause

Agent workflow that creates tracker issues does not check for pre-existing open issues with the same title before filing. When the temporary_id pattern (#aw_cs4d) was used internally but not enforced via a title-search guard, two parallel invocations (or a retry) produced duplicates.

Impact

  • Noise: Duplicate issues consume safe-output quota (2× per event)
  • Confusion: Human reviewers see the same issue twice in triage
  • Debt: One duplicate must be manually closed
  • Pattern risk: Any agent that creates tracker issues is vulnerable if it runs more than once without a dedup check

Recommended Fix

  1. Before create_issue: run gh issue list --search "TITLE" --state open and skip if a match exists.
  2. Use temporary_id to cross-reference in the same run; confirm the ID is stable and surfaced in safe-output validation.
  3. Add dedup logic to Workflow Health Monitor and Failure Investigator prompts explicitly.
  4. Consider a shared shared-alerts.md lock — the file already lists "DO NOT RE-FILE" entries; agents should verify this list before creating any tracker issue.

Effort Estimate

  • Prompt update for affected workflows: ~1–2 hours
  • Expected improvement: Reduce duplicate issue rate by ~95%

References

  • §27419589668 — Agent Performance Analyzer run that detected this pattern
  • Agent-performance-latest.md: shared-alerts.md already documents the "Do Not Re-File" pattern but agents are not reliably checking it

Generated by ⚡ Agent Performance Analyzer - Meta-Orchestrator · 501 AIC · ⌖ 20.6 AIC · ⊞ 22.2K ·

  • expires on Jun 14, 2026, 6:03 AM UTC-08:00

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