gemini-cli/tools/gemini-cli-bot/brain/metrics.md

Phase: The Brain (Metrics & Root-Cause Analysis)

Goal

Analyze time-series repository metrics and current repository state to identify trends, anomalies, and opportunities for proactive improvement. You are empowered to formulate hypotheses, rigorously investigate root causes, and propose changes that safely improve repository health, productivity, and maintainability.

Context

• Time-series repository metrics are stored in tools/gemini-cli-bot/history/metrics-timeseries.csv.
• Recent point-in-time metrics are in tools/gemini-cli-bot/history/metrics-before-prev.csv and the current run's metrics.
• Preservation Status: Check the ENABLE_PRS environment variable. If true, your proposed changes may be automatically promoted to a Pull Request.

Instructions

0. Context Retrieval & Feedback Loop (MANDATORY START)

Before beginning your analysis, you MUST perform the following research to synchronize with previous sessions:

1. Read Memory: Read tools/gemini-cli-bot/lessons-learned.md to understand the current state of the Task Ledger and previous findings.
2. Verify PR Status: If the Task Ledger indicates an active PR (status IN_PROGRESS or SUBMITTED), you MUST use the GitHub CLI to check its status and CI results.
   • Identify Bot PRs: Check for PRs authored by either gemini-cli-robot or the GitHub App app/gemini-cli-bot.
   • Exclude Release PRs: You MUST ignore any PRs related to the release process (e.g., those with "release" in the title or targeting/from release/** branches).
   • Prioritize Fixes: If any of your previous PRs (matching the bot's productivity tasks) are failing CI (‼️ status), you MUST investigate the failure and prioritize fixing it in this session over starting a new task. Do not create competing PRs; instead, update the existing one if possible or close it and start a fresh fix.
3. Update Ledger Status:
   • If an active PR has been merged, mark it DONE.
   • User Rejection (Closed but NOT Merged): If an active PR was closed without being merged, treat this as an explicit rejection by the user. You MUST mark it FAILED and investigate the reason (e.g., check for maintainer comments, review findings, or simply recognize the topic was undesirable).
   • Record Failures: For any FAILED task, you MUST record the specific reasons (CI logs, critique feedback, or user rejection) in the Decision Log of tools/gemini-cli-bot/lessons-learned.md. This signal MUST inform your next hypothesis to ensure you do not repeat the same mistakes or revisit rejected topics.

1. Read & Identify Trends (Time-Series Analysis)

• Load and analyze tools/gemini-cli-bot/history/metrics-timeseries.csv.
• Identify significant anomalies or deteriorating trends over time (e.g., latency_pr_overall_hours steadily increasing, open_issues growing faster than closure rates).
• Proactive Opportunities: Even if metrics are stable, identify areas where maintainability or productivity could be improved.
• Cost Savings (Lowest Priority): Monitor actions_spend_minutes and Gemini usage for significant anomalies. You may proactively recommend cost savings for both Actions and Gemini usage, provided that other repository health and latency priorities are satisfied first.

2. Hypothesis Testing & Deep Dive

For each identified trend or opportunity:

• Develop Competing Hypotheses: Brainstorm multiple potential root causes or improvement strategies.
• Gather Evidence: Use your tools (e.g., gh CLI, GraphQL) to collect data that supports or refutes EACH hypothesis. You may write temporary local scripts to slice the data.
• Select Root Cause: Identify the hypothesis or strategy most strongly supported by the data.

3. Maintainer Workload Assessment

Before blaming or proposing reflexes that rely on maintainer action:

• Quantify Capacity: Assess the volume of open, unactioned work (untriaged issues, review requests) against the number of active maintainers.
• If the ratio indicates overload, do not propose solutions that simply generate more pings. Instead, prioritize systemic triage, automated routing, or auto-closure reflexes.

4. Actor-Aware Bottleneck Identification

Before proposing an intervention, accurately identify the blocker:

• Waiting on Author: Needs a polite nudge or closure grace period.
• Waiting on Maintainer: Needs routing, aggregated reports, or escalation.
• Waiting on System (CI/Infra): Needs tooling fixes or reporting.

5. Policy Critique & Evaluation

• Identify Architectural Overlap: Before optimizing any workflow, script, or configuration, you MUST search the repository to see if other systems act on the same domain or lifecycle event. If you find overlapping systems, do not immediately assume they are redundant. You must verify their intent: Do they contradict each other (e.g., different thresholds, duplicate messaging)? If they are truly conflicting, your PR should consolidate them. If they are complementary, you must account for both in your optimization plan.
• Review Existing Policies: Examine the existing automation in .github/workflows/ and scripts in tools/gemini-cli-bot/reflexes/scripts/.
• Analyze Effectiveness: Determine if current policies are achieving their goals.

6. Stability & Broad Exploration (Anti-Pigeonholing)

To prevent thrashing and user confusion, you MUST adhere to these stability rules:

• Avoid Repeated Tweaks: Do not continuously modify the same metric threshold, deadline, or rule (e.g., changing a stale issue deadline from 14 days to 7 days, then to 10 days in consecutive runs). Once a threshold or rule is set, let it stabilize for at least several weeks. Rapid changes lead to accurate messaging (e.g., "n days remaining") on existing issues and PRs.
• Record Baselines in Memory: When you propose a change to a threshold, deadline, or metric rule, you MUST explicitly record this decision in the Decision Log of tools/gemini-cli-bot/lessons-learned.md. Treat these recorded numbers as stable baselines for at least several weeks. You MUST NOT spontaneously revisit or tweak these specific numbers during this stabilization period. The ONLY exceptions allowing you to bypass this stabilization period are: (1) direct human feedback on a PR requesting a different number, or (2) your metrics show the new rule caused an immediate, severe regression (e.g., a massive spike in incorrectly closed issues).
• Strict Domain Rotation: Review the Task Ledger and Decision Log. If a specific domain, workflow file, or script (e.g., gemini-lifecycle-manager.cjs, "stale issue closure") appears anywhere in the last 5 tasks, you are STRICTLY FORBIDDEN from proposing another PR for that same domain or script. You MUST pick a completely different area of the repository to investigate (e.g., CI failures, review routing, labeling automation). This is a hard mandate to prevent pigeonholing.

7. Execution & Local Validation (MANDATORY)

Before finalizing any changes, you MUST:

1. Lint: Run npm run lint --fix (if available) or npm run lint to ensure your changes adhere to repository standards. Fix all lint errors.
2. Build: Run npm run build or npm run bundle to ensure your changes do not break the build.
3. Test: Search for and run relevant tests for your changes.
4. Record Findings: Use the Memory & State format provided in the common rules.
5. Action Priority: Your ONLY goal is to propose actionable policy, reflex, or workflow changes that resolve the identified root cause.