anthropics / anthropics/claude-code-action

claude-code-review.yml has two recurring failure modes (Mode A: gh CLI invocation; Mode B: haiku dedup false-positive)

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bug p2
Dominant language
TypeScript
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Description

We use `anthropics/claude-code-action`'s `claude-code-review.yml` workflow on the [nedati-technologies/claude-wow-plugin](https://github.com/nedati-technologies/claude-wow-plugin) repo. Across May 2026 (PRs #62-#74) we've observed two recurring failure modes producing ~70% review-failure rate on otherwise-passing PRs. Both are deterministic + reproducible.

## Mode A: `gh pr view` invoked without `--repo`

In some workflow code paths, the action calls `gh pr view ` without `--repo $OWNER/$REPO`. When the action runs in a workflow context where the default repo isn't auto-detected (or where the working directory is not the repo root), `gh` errors out with:

```
no default remote repository or repository is not specified
```

The action then exits non-zero and no review is posted, despite the action succeeding at all other steps.

**Suggested fix:** always pass `--repo "${GITHUB_REPOSITORY}"` to `gh pr view` / `gh pr list` / `gh issue` invocations inside the action. The `GITHUB_REPOSITORY` env var is provided automatically in GitHub Actions context.

## Mode B: haiku dedup skips reviews with no specific findings

The action's "haiku pre-check" stage is supposed to dedupe identical review outputs, but on small/trivial PRs (1-2 file changes, no real issues to flag) it appears to mis-classify the absence of findings as a "duplicate" and skips posting the review entirely. Result: PR author gets no review at all, even a "no issues found" stub would be useful.

**Reproduction:** PRs #72/#73/#74 on the cited repo are doc-heavy / config-light PRs where the previous PR's "no issues found" review and the current PR's "no issues found" review both look identical to haiku-dedup, so the second is suppressed.

**Suggested fix:** either (1) skip the dedup pass when the LLM's verdict is the no-issues stub, or (2) include the PR number / commit SHA in the dedup hash so trivially-identical outputs across distinct PRs aren't deduped.

## Repro environment

- GitHub Actions: ubuntu-latest
- claude-code-action: latest at time of failure (May 2026)
- Repo size: ~120 source files, ~70 markdown files

Happy to provide failed-run URLs if useful; please ping back.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start with the claude-code-review.yml workflow and trace the action paths that invoke gh pr view, gh pr list, or gh issue, then inspect the haiku pre-check dedup stage. Reproduce the failures using PRs #72–#74 and verify that repository-qualified CLI calls work and that distinct no-issues reviews are posted rather than suppressed.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
github, github-actions, typescript
Domain
ci-cd, devops
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

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