DailyOps

DailyOps workflows automate incremental progress toward large goals through small, scheduled daily changes. Work happens automatically in manageable pieces that are easy to review and integrate.

When to Use DailyOps

• Continuous improvement - Daily code quality improvements
• Progressive migrations - Gradually update dependencies or patterns
• Documentation maintenance - Keep docs fresh with daily updates
• Technical debt - Chip away at issues one small PR at a time

The DailyOps Pattern

Scheduled Execution

Workflows run on weekday schedules (avoiding weekends) with workflow_dispatch enabled for manual testing:

---
on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 2 * * 1-5"  # Weekdays only (no short syntax available)
  workflow_dispatch:
---

Phased Approach

Work proceeds through three phases with maintainer approval between each:

1. Research - Analyze state, create discussion with findings
2. Configuration - Define steps, create config PR
3. Execution - Make improvements, verify, create draft PRs

Progress Tracking

Use GitHub discussions to maintain continuity across runs. The workflow creates a discussion (if none exists) and adds progress comments on subsequent runs:

safe-outputs:
  create-discussion:
    title-prefix: "${{ github.workflow }}"
    category: "ideas"

The safe-outputs: (validated GitHub operations) configuration lets the AI request discussion creation without requiring write permissions.

Discussion Comments

For workflows that post updates to an existing discussion, use add-comment with discussion: true and a specific target discussion number:

safe-outputs:
  add-comment:
    target: "4750"
    discussion: true

This pattern is ideal for daily status posts, recurring reports, or community updates. The daily-fact.md workflow demonstrates this by posting daily facts about the repository to a pinned discussion thread.

Persistent Memory

Enable cache-memory to maintain state at /tmp/gh-aw/cache-memory/ across runs, useful for tracking progress, storing metrics, and building knowledge bases over time:

tools:
  cache-memory: true

Common DailyOps Workflows

This repository implements several DailyOps workflows demonstrating different use cases:

• daily-fact.md - Posts daily facts about the repository to a discussion thread
• daily-test-improver.md - Systematically adds tests to improve coverage incrementally
• daily-perf-improver.md - Identifies and implements performance optimizations
• daily-doc-updater.md - Keeps documentation synchronized with merged code changes
• daily-team-status (from agentics) - Creates daily team status reports with activity summaries
• daily-repo-chronicle.md - Produces newspaper-style repository updates
• daily-firewall-report.md - Analyzes and reports on firewall activity

All follow the phased approach with discussions for tracking and draft pull requests for review.

Implementation Guide

1. Define Goal - Identify ongoing goal (test coverage, performance, docs sync)
2. Design Workflow - Set weekday schedule, configure safe-outputs for discussions/PRs
3. Research Phase - Analyze state, create discussion, wait for approval
4. Config Phase - Create config files, test, submit PR, wait for approval
5. Execute Daily - Make small improvements, verify, create draft PRs, update discussion

Best Practices

• Keep changes reviewable in 5-10 minutes
• Use draft PRs to signal review needed
• Track progress and issues in discussions
• Handle failures by creating issues and exiting cleanly
• Enable workflow_dispatch for manual testing
• Schedule weekdays only to avoid weekend buildup

Related Patterns

• IssueOps - Trigger workflows from issue creation or comments
• ChatOps - Trigger workflows from slash commands in comments
• LabelOps - Trigger workflows when labels change on issues or pull requests
• Planning Workflow - Use /plan command to split large discussions into actionable work items, then assign sub-tasks to Copilot for execution

DailyOps complements these patterns by providing scheduled automation that doesn’t require manual triggers.