Pith Number

pith:KBF2CTMT

pith:2026:KBF2CTMTKAWYFLG6HKDJG2D3GG

not attested not anchored not stored refs pending

Beyond the YAML File: Understanding Real-World GitHub Actions Workflow Adoption

Ali Khatami, Andy Zaidman, Carolin Brandt

Real-world GitHub Actions data reveals three distinct developer responses to workflow failures along with a gap between configuration and actual use.

arxiv:2604.17662 v2 · 2026-04-19 · cs.SE

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\usepackage{pith}
\pithnumber{KBF2CTMTKAWYFLG6HKDJG2D3GG}

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Record completeness

1 Bitcoin timestamp

2 Internet Archive

3 Author claim open · sign in to claim

4 Citations open

5 Replications open

✓ Portable graph bundle live · download bundle · merged state

The bundle contains the canonical record plus signed events. A mirror can host it anywhere and recompute the same current state with the deterministic merge algorithm.

Claims

C1strongest claim

We identify three distinct failure response patterns, observe that higher usage intensity of GHA workflows correlates with lower failure rates, and uncover a configuration-usage gap where the presence of configuration files masks disabled or unused workflows.

C2weakest assumption

The 952 repositories and 21 selected for qualitative study are sufficiently representative of broader GitHub Actions usage, and the observed patterns and correlation are not artifacts of selection or measurement choices.

C3one line summary

Large-scale analysis of GitHub Actions reveals three failure response patterns, a positive link between usage intensity and lower failure rates, and a gap between config file presence and actual workflow activity.

Receipt and verification

First computed	2026-06-10T01:10:01.351679Z
Builder	pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1
Signature	Pith Ed25519 (`pith-v1-2026-05`) · public key
Schema	pith-number/v1.0

Canonical hash

504ba14d93502d82acde3a8693687b3198155d2ca5a5172fbfc714d3dd3bad82

Aliases

arxiv: 2604.17662 · arxiv_version: 2604.17662v2 · doi: 10.48550/arxiv.2604.17662 · pith_short_12: KBF2CTMTKAWY · pith_short_16: KBF2CTMTKAWYFLG6 · pith_short_8: KBF2CTMT

Agent API

Resolver JSON Graph JSON Events JSON Schema Signing key

Verify this Pith Number yourself

curl -sH 'Accept: application/ld+json' https://pith.science/pith/KBF2CTMTKAWYFLG6HKDJG2D3GG \
  | jq -c '.canonical_record' \
  | python3 -c "import sys,json,hashlib; b=json.dumps(json.loads(sys.stdin.read()), sort_keys=True, separators=(',',':'), ensure_ascii=False).encode(); print(hashlib.sha256(b).hexdigest())"
# expect: 504ba14d93502d82acde3a8693687b3198155d2ca5a5172fbfc714d3dd3bad82

Canonical record JSON

{
  "metadata": {
    "abstract_canon_sha256": "6c173c715e7c64c051c2f07210fde8a61ead7e4bf37941e3b920bb8757083bbe",
    "cross_cats_sorted": [],
    "license": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
    "primary_cat": "cs.SE",
    "submitted_at": "2026-04-19T23:23:59Z",
    "title_canon_sha256": "1d0b86285dcaffbd0f69a1a459fbaa17590c88aa3ec62e17b5f86e9deca7ebe0"
  },
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "source": {
    "id": "2604.17662",
    "kind": "arxiv",
    "version": 2
  }
}