Comment on [aw] Smoke Copilot has stale lock file

Agent job 29741932374 failed.

Warning

Lock File Out of Sync: The workflow could not start because its compiled lock file no longer matches the source markdown.

This means the workflow's .md file was edited but gh aw compile was not run afterwards to regenerate the corresponding .lock.yml file. The agent is prevented from running against a stale configuration to avoid unexpected behaviour.

To fix, recompile the workflow:

gh aw compile

Then commit and push the updated .lock.yml file.

More ways to recompile

Using the gh-aw MCP server (if configured):

{ "tool": "compile", "arguments": { "validate": true } }

Recompile all workflows at once:

gh aw compile --all

Verify the result:

gh aw compile --validate

How to investigate the mismatch

The workflow run logs contain a verbose debug pass that shows exactly what was hashed. Search the Check workflow lock file step logs for lines starting with [hash-debug] to see:

The raw frontmatter text that was used as input
Any imported files that were included in the hash
The canonical JSON that was fed to SHA-256
The resulting hash value

This makes it easy to spot accidental whitespace changes, encoding differences, or import path drift.

This mismatch can also happen on a fresh install (even without any manual edits) if gh aw add <path>@<ref> could not resolve the ref to an exact commit SHA during installation. In that case, rerun the add command with an exact SHA (or retry when API/rate-limit conditions recover), then recompile:

gh aw add <path>@<exact-sha>
gh aw compile

How to disable this check

[!CAUTION]
Disabling this check means the agent can run against an out-of-date compiled workflow. Only disable it if you have an alternative mechanism to keep lock files in sync.

Set stale-check: false in the on: section of your workflow frontmatter:

on:
  issues:
    types: [opened]
  stale-check: false

After editing, recompile the workflow: gh aw compile

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