CI/CD and Automation#

Overdue uses GitHub Actions for continuous integration and automated documentation maintenance. This page describes the workflows, their triggers, and how to configure them.

Workflows#

Auto-Update Documentation (doc-update.yml)#

Automatically detects when merged PRs introduce documentation drift and proposes updates via follow-up PRs.

Trigger: Runs when a PR is merged to main.

How it works:

1. Checks out the repository with full history (fetch-depth: 0)
2. Computes the list of files changed between the PR's base and merge commits
3. Passes the changed files and PR metadata to Claude Code Action
4. Claude reads the changed files and all documentation in docs/
5. If documentation updates are needed, Claude creates a new branch (docs/update-from-pr-{number}), commits changes, and opens a follow-up PR
6. If no updates are needed, Claude explains why and the workflow exits cleanly

Tool permissions: The Claude Code Action step runs with a restricted set of allowed tools:

Bash is allowed without restriction. This is a deliberate trade-off between tool-level command restrictions and workflow reliability:

• Why not individual patterns: Restricting Bash to individual command patterns (e.g., Bash(git diff *)) is fragile — Claude naturally uses arbitrary shell commands (find, cat, compound commands, env-prefixed commands) that don't match specific patterns. Each denied command wastes a turn, and with --max-turns 25, a few denials can cause the workflow to fail without completing its task. This failure mode occurred repeatedly in PRs #29, #33, and #38.
• Residual risk: Unrestricted Bash means Claude can execute any shell command on the runner, including network calls or reading environment variables. If PR metadata were crafted to manipulate Claude's behavior, this could be exploited.
• Mitigations: The workflow only runs for OWNER, MEMBER, or COLLABORATOR PRs (not external contributors). PR metadata is wrapped in XML tags with explicit instructions to treat it as untrusted data. The runner is ephemeral (disposable VM) with no access to production systems. All changes go through PR review before merging. The ANTHROPIC_API_KEY secret is the only sensitive value on the runner and is not exposed to tool output.

Safety guards:

Required repository configuration:

Documentation Freshness (freshness.yml)#

Scores every doc page on a 0--100 scale on every PR and gates the merge against an SLO.

Trigger: Runs on PRs touching docs/, src/, the freshness script, the allowlist, or this workflow file. Also runs on push to main to refresh the baseline artifact.

How it works:

1. Checks out the PR ref with full history (fetch-depth: 0)
2. Runs .github/scripts/freshness.py to score each page from three deterministic signals (git age delta, frontmatter TTL, symbol drift)
3. Adds a git worktree for the PR base ref and scores the baseline so the comment formatter can show per-page deltas
4. Pages in the 35--64 gray zone are routed to a conditional Claude Code Action step that classifies each as STILL_ACCURATE, DRIFTED, or NEEDS_HUMAN_REVIEW
5. marocchino/sticky-pull-request-comment@v2 posts (or updates) a single PR comment with the median delta and per-page drops
6. The SLO gate fails the job when the median drops below 75 or any critical: true page drops below 60

Tool permissions for the semantic check: Read, Glob, Grep only -- the step reads source files and docs and does not write anything.

Required repository configuration:

Required status check setup:

To make merges actually wait on the freshness gate, mark this workflow as a required status check on the protected branch.

1. Settings -> Branches -> Add rule (or edit the existing rule for main)
2. Enable Require status checks to pass before merging
3. Search for and select freshness (the job ID from this workflow)
4. Save

Authors will still see the comment with the median delta on every PR even without protection rules, but only the required-status-check setup blocks merges on a failing SLO.

Local check:

Run the pipeline against the working tree before pushing:

uv run python .github/scripts/freshness.py
jq '[.[] | .score] | (add / length)' freshness.json # mean
jq '[.[] | select(.score < 75)]' freshness.json # below-floor pages

The generated freshness.json is gitignored.

Documentation structure#

The doc-update workflow scans all files under docs/ and any README.md in the repository root. Documentation that references code behavior, configuration values, or game mechanics is most likely to need updates when those areas change.

Troubleshooting#

Workflow fails with error_max_turns and permission_denials_count > 0#

Claude tried to use a tool that isn't in the allowedTools list. The CI logs only show the denial count, not which commands were denied, making individual patterns hard to debug. The fix is to allow Bash without restriction (see tool permissions above). If you need to restrict Bash, use broad patterns like Bash(git *) rather than individual subcommands, and note that the :* suffix syntax is deprecated in favor of * (space-star).

Workflow fails with a 502 or OIDC error#

Transient GitHub API or authentication failure. Re-run the failed job from the Actions tab.

Workflow creates unnecessary doc update PRs#

Add the skip-docs-check label to PRs that don't need documentation review (e.g., dependency bumps, CI-only changes).