Weekly Update – March 23, 2026
Another week, another flurry of releases in github/gh-aw. Eight versions shipped between March 18 and March 21, pushing security hardening, extensibility, and performance improvements across the board. Here’s what you need to know.
Releases This Week
Section titled “Releases This Week”v0.62.5 — March 21
Section titled “v0.62.5 — March 21”The latest release leads with two important security fixes:
- Supply chain protection: The Trivy vulnerability scanner action was removed after a supply chain compromise was discovered (#22007, #22065). Scanning has been replaced with a safer alternative.
- Public repo integrity hardening (#21969): GitHub App authentication no longer exempts public repositories from the minimum-integrity guard policy, closing a gap where untrusted content could bypass integrity checks.
On the feature side:
- Timezone support for
on.schedule(#22018): Cron entries now accept an optionaltimezonefield — finally, no more mental UTC arithmetic when you want your workflow to run “at 9 AM Pacific”. - Boolean expression optimizer (#22025): Condition trees are optimized at compile time, generating cleaner
if:expressions in compiled workflows. - Wildcard
target-repoin safe-output handlers (#21877): Usetarget-repo: "*"to write a single handler definition that works across any repository.
v0.62.3 — March 20
Section titled “v0.62.3 — March 20”This one is a standout for extensibility and speed:
- Custom Actions as Safe Output Tools (#21752): You can now expose any GitHub Action as an MCP tool via the new
safe-outputs.actionsblock. The compiler resolvesaction.ymlat compile time to derive the tool schema and inject it into the agent — no custom wiring needed. This opens the door to a whole ecosystem of reusable safe-output handlers built from standard Actions. - ~20 seconds faster per workflow run (#21873): A bump to
DefaultFirewallVersionv0.24.5 eliminates a 10-second shutdown delay for both the agent container and the threat detection container. That’s 20 free seconds on every single run. trustedBotssupport in MCP Gateway (#21865): Pass an allowlist of additional GitHub bot identities to the MCP Gateway, enabling safe cross-bot collaboration in guarded environments.gh-aw-metadatav3 (#21899): Lock files now embed the configured agent ID/model in thegh-aw-metadatacomment, making audits much easier.
v0.62.2 — March 19
Section titled “v0.62.2 — March 19”! Breaking change alert: lockdown: true is gone. It has been replaced by the more expressive min-integrity field. If you have lockdown: false in your frontmatter, remove it — it’s no longer recognized. The new integrity-level system gives you finer control over what content can trigger your workflows.
This release also introduces integrity filtering for log analysis — the gh aw logs command can now filter to only runs where DIFC integrity events were triggered, making security investigations much faster.
v0.62.0 — March 19
Section titled “v0.62.0 — March 19”The GitHub MCP guard policy graduates to general availability. The policy automatically configures appropriate access controls on the GitHub MCP server at runtime — no manual lockdown configuration required. Also new: inline custom safe-output scripts, letting you define JavaScript handlers directly in your workflow frontmatter without a separate file.
v0.61.x — March 18
Section titled “v0.61.x — March 18”Three patch releases covered:
- Signed-commit support for protected branches (v0.61.1)
- Broader ecosystem domain coverage for language package registries (v0.61.2)
- Critical
workflow_dispatchexpression evaluation fix (v0.61.2)
Notable Pull Requests
Section titled “Notable Pull Requests”Several important fixes landed today (March 23):
- Propagate
assign_copilotfailures to agent failure comment (#22371): Whenassign_copilot_to_created_issuesfails (e.g., bad credentials), the failure context is now surfaced in the agent failure issue so you can actually diagnose it. - Post failure comment when agent assignment fails (#22347): A follow-up to the above — the failure now also posts a comment directly on the target issue or PR for immediate visibility.
- Hot-path regexp and YAML parse elimination (#22359): Redundant regexp compilations and YAML re-parses on the hot path have been eliminated, improving throughput for high-volume workflow execution.
blocked-usersandapproval-labelsin guard policy (#22360): Thetools.githubguard policy now supportsblocked-usersandapproval-labelsfields, giving you more granular control over who can trigger guarded workflows.- Pull merged workflow files after GitHub confirms readiness (#22335): A race condition where merged workflow files were pulled before GitHub reported the workflow as ready has been fixed.
Agent of the Week: contribution-check
Section titled “ Agent of the Week: contribution-check”Your tireless four-hourly guardian of PR quality — reads every open pull request and evaluates it against CONTRIBUTING.md for compliance and completeness.
contribution-check ran five times this week (once every four hours, as scheduled) and processed a steady stream of incoming PRs, creating issues for contributors who needed guidance, adding labels, and leaving review comments. Four of five runs completed in under 5 minutes with 6–9 turns. The fifth run, however, apparently found the task of reviewing PRs during a particularly active Sunday evening so intellectually stimulating that it worked through 50 turns and consumed 1.55 million tokens — roughly 5× its usual appetite — before the safe_outputs step politely called it a night. It still managed to file issues, label PRs, and post comments on the way out. Overachiever.
One earlier run also hit a minor hiccup: the pre-agent filter step forgot to write its output file, leaving the agent with nothing to evaluate. Rather than fabricating a list of PRs to review, it dutifully reported “missing data” and moved on. Sometimes the bravest thing is knowing when there’s nothing to do.
Usage tip: The contribution-check pattern works best when your CONTRIBUTING.md is explicit and opinionated — the more specific your guidelines, the more actionable its feedback will be for contributors.
Try It Out
Section titled “Try It Out”Update to v0.62.5 to pick up the security fixes and timezone support. If you’ve been holding off on migrating from lockdown: true, now’s the time — check the v0.62.2 release notes for the migration path. As always, contributions and feedback are welcome in github/gh-aw.
