[cli-tools-test] logs tool: engine filter query exceeds default timeout (context deadline exceeded)

[github-actions]

Problem Description

The agenticworkflows logs MCP tool times out with context deadline exceeded when filtering by engine (e.g. engine: "claude") even with a small count. The default timeout appears to be 60s, which is insufficient for engine-filtered queries — the underlying implementation likely has to scan/paginate through many workflow runs to find ones matching the engine rather than filtering more efficiently.

Command/Tool

• Tool: logs (agentic-workflows MCP server)
• Command:

  printf '{"engine":"claude","count":2,"max_tokens":3000}' | agenticworkflows logs .
  

Steps to Reproduce

1. Call the logs tool with engine: "claude" and count: 2 (default timeout, no explicit timeout param).
2. Observe the call runs for the full 60s and fails.
3. Retry the same query with timeout: 300 explicitly set — it succeeds in ~30s.

Expected Behavior

Engine-filtered log queries with a small count (e.g. 2) should complete well within the default timeout, similar to unfiltered or workflow_name-filtered queries which typically complete in 6-11s.

Actual Behavior

With default timeout, the call errors out after 60s with:

Error [0]: context deadline exceeded

Retrying with timeout: 300 succeeds after ~30s, confirming the query itself works but the default timeout budget is too aggressive for engine-filtered queries.

Environment

• Repository: github/gh-aw
• Run ID: 31461891659
• Date: 2026-08-11

Impact

• Severity: Medium
• Frequency: Likely always for engine-filtered queries against a repo with many workflow runs (this repo has 284 workflows across 12 engines)
• Workaround: Explicitly pass a higher timeout (e.g. timeout: 300) when using the engine filter.

Additional Context

Other logs filters tested (workflow_name, start_date incl. future dates, nonexistent workflow name) all completed quickly (<11s) and returned clear, well-formed results/error messages. Only the engine filter exhibited this default-timeout issue. Consider raising the default timeout for engine-filtered queries, optimizing the underlying scan (e.g. using GitHub Actions workflow-run list filters server-side), or adding partial/streaming results before the deadline.

A minor, non-blocking usability gap was also found: the compile tool's --help text does not clarify that workflows must be an array (passing a plain string yields a JSON-schema validation error: type: ... has type "string", want one of "null, array"). Adding an example with array syntax to the help text would prevent this trial-and-error.

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• expires on Aug 17, 2026, 9:42 PM UTC-08:00