Automate with GitHub Actions

You have a task family that works locally. Now you want benchmarks to run automatically. They can run on pull requests that touch your skills, on a weekly schedule, or on demand. The forwardimpact/gemba-benchmark GitHub Action wraps the CLI. It adds step summaries and artifact upload. It also handles timeout control.

Prerequisites

• A task family (see Run a Benchmark)
• ANTHROPIC_API_KEY stored as a repository secret
• The forwardimpact/gemba-bootstrap action in the same job. The benchmark action runs the gemba-benchmark binary straight off PATH, and gemba-bootstrap puts it there.

Minimal Workflow

name: Benchmark

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  pull_request:
    paths:
      - ".claude/skills/**"
      - "benchmarks/my-family/**"

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  benchmark:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: forwardimpact/gemba-bootstrap@v1
        with:
          clis: gemba-benchmark
      - uses: forwardimpact/gemba-benchmark@v1
        with:
          family: ./benchmarks/my-family
          runs: "5"
          judge-profile: judge

The action handles everything after the bootstrap step. It runs each task N times. It appends the pass@k report to the GitHub step summary. It uploads results.jsonl as a workflow artifact.

What the Action Does

1. Install apm — installs the apm package manager when the runner does not carry it already. gemba-bootstrap normally installs it first, and this step then skips the download.
2. Resolve paths — creates the run-output directory and picks the artifact name. A sharded run gets a shard-scoped name, so a matrix never collides on upload.
3. Run — executes gemba-benchmark run with the provided inputs, under the timeout-minutes cap.
4. Report — appends the text report to GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY (when summary is "true"). Set summary-detail to "compact" for a short status + pass@k summary instead of the full per-task detail.
5. Upload — uploads results.jsonl as a workflow artifact (when upload-results is "true").

Inputs

The action exposes most gemba-benchmark run CLI flags as action inputs. --task, --skills-from and --work-tracker have no input, and --shard=i/N splits into shard-index and shard-total. The action also adds CI-specific inputs that have no CLI equivalent:

Input	Default	Description
family	(required)	Path or git URL to a task family
output	"benchmark-runs"	Run-output directory
runs	"5"	Runs per task
agent-model	(CLI default)	Claude model for the agent-under-test. Empty falls through to the gemba-benchmark CLI default
lead-model	(CLI default)	Claude model for the lead role. Empty falls through to the gemba-benchmark CLI default
judge-model	(CLI default)	Claude model for the judge. Empty falls through to the gemba-benchmark CLI default
agent-profile		Agent-under-test profile name
judge-profile		Judge profile name
max-turns	"50"	Agent turn budget (0 = unlimited)
allowed-tools	"Bash,Read,Glob,Grep,Write,Edit,Agent,TodoWrite"	Agent tool allowlist
concurrency	(CLI default)	Max cells run concurrently in-process. Empty uses the CPU-aware CLI default (on by default)
shard-index	"1"	1-based shard index (run mode)
shard-total	"1"	Total shard count. "1" runs the whole family
mode	"run"	run executes one shard. merge aggregates every shard's partial ledger
merge-input	"benchmark-merge"	Directory that shard ledgers download into (merge mode)
k	"1,3,5"	Comma-separated k values for pass@k
format	"text"	Report output format
summary	"true"	Append report to GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY
summary-detail	"full"	Run-mode summary verbosity (full or compact). compact renders status + pass@k only
upload-results	"true"	Upload results.jsonl as artifact
artifact-name	"benchmark-results"	Name for the uploaded artifact (run mode with shard-total > "1" uploads benchmark-shard-<i>)
timeout-minutes	"60"	Maximum minutes before cancellation

Outputs

Output	Description
results-path	Absolute path to results.jsonl

Use results-path in downstream steps to consume or compare results programmatically.

Task Secrets

Tasks that declare .env or .env.local files resolve their variables from the runner environment. Add the required secrets alongside ANTHROPIC_API_KEY:

jobs:
  benchmark:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY }}
      LLMHUB_NONPROD_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.LLMHUB_NONPROD_API_KEY }}
      LLMHUB_PROD_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.LLMHUB_PROD_API_KEY }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: forwardimpact/gemba-bootstrap@v1
        with:
          clis: gemba-benchmark
      - uses: forwardimpact/gemba-benchmark@v1
        with:
          family: ./benchmarks/my-family
          runs: "5"

The harness reads the task's .env.local for var names. It resolves each name from process.env, where the GitHub secrets live. It then renders the file into the agent's working directory. You need no prepare.sh. You stage nothing by hand.

Scheduled Runs

Add a cron trigger to track outcomes over time:

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: "0 6 * * 1"
  workflow_dispatch:

Scheduled runs on main create a weekly baseline. Compare the latest results.jsonl artifact against a previous week's to detect regressions.

Cost Control

Each run invokes Claude for the agent-under-test, for invariants, and for the judge. Control cost with:

• runs — fewer runs means lower cost but weaker statistical signal. Five runs is a reasonable floor for pass@k.
• max-turns — caps agent turns per run. Tasks that finish fast rarely need more than 25.
• timeout-minutes — hard cancellation. The default is 60. Adjust it to the family size.
• PR path filters — only run when relevant files change.

Matrix Workflows

When you run benchmarks across multiple families in a matrix, use artifact-name to avoid upload collisions:

strategy:
  matrix:
    family:
      - { path: "./benchmarks/kata-skills", name: "kata" }
      - { path: "./benchmarks/fit-skills", name: "fit" }
steps:
  - uses: forwardimpact/gemba-benchmark@v1
    with:
      family: ${{ matrix.family.path }}
      artifact-name: benchmark-${{ matrix.family.name }}

The two family names come from the platform's reference tenant, Kata, which grades two skill packs in one workflow. Use your own family paths and names.

Scale One Family Across Machines

A single machine has a CPU and a per-job time ceiling. One family can be too large to finish in one job. The run then hits the timeout. Fan it across machines with the bundled reusable workflow. A single shard-total input runs a deterministic, balanced subset of the cells on each machine. It merges the partial ledgers into one pass@k:

jobs:
  benchmark:
    uses: forwardimpact/gemba-benchmark/.github/workflows/benchmark.yml@v1
    with:
      family: ./benchmarks/my-family
      runs: "5"
      shard-total: 4
    secrets:
      ANTHROPIC_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY }}

The workflow runs three stages. A prepare job emits the shard list. Four parallel shard jobs each run their slice with in-process concurrency and upload a benchmark-shard-<i> partial ledger. A dependent merge job aggregates the combined report. The merge job carries no agent scaffold. It provisions only the report CLI, because report --input discovers and unions every shard's results.jsonl recursively. Effective parallelism is shard-total × the per-machine concurrency. If you leave shard-total unset, the whole family runs in one shard job. That is the identity case.

Each shard job emits a compact summary (status + pass@k). So a many-shard run stays quick to scan. The merge job emits the single full report over the combined ledger.

Verify

After the workflow runs, confirm:

1. The step summary shows a pass@k table.
2. You can download the benchmark-results artifact from the workflow run.
3. The exit code reflects the aggregate verdict. It is 0 when all tasks pass and 1 otherwise.

What's next