VP Escalation: 59 PRs stuck — workflow_dispatch E2E runs don't register as PR status checks

[github-actions]

👀 VP escalation: 59 open PRs have been stuck for 13–15 hours with zero status checks, preventing auto-merge.

Root cause

The lead-e2e-sweep.yml workflow triggers lead-e2e.yml via workflow_dispatch on each PR branch. These runs complete successfully but workflow_dispatch runs do not register as status checks on the associated pull request. The PRs have auto-merge enabled but will never merge because no checks appear.

The sweep runs every 10 minutes, re-triggering E2E on all 59 branches each time (since checks never appear), creating redundant runs.

Affected PRs

All 59 open PRs (numbers #58–#118) — CLI and Python recipe branches.

What I tried

• Verified E2E workflow runs are completing successfully on these branches
• Confirmed gh pr checks returns "no checks reported" for every PR
• Confirmed the sweep is running and triggering dispatches correctly
• The problem is architectural: workflow_dispatch events don't associate with PRs

Suggested fix

The E2E workflow needs to post a commit status or check run via the GitHub API after a successful workflow_dispatch run, OR the approach needs to change to use pull_request triggers with proper filtering. This requires a human to modify .github/workflows/.

Tagging @deepgram/devrel for human review.

[claude]

Thanks for flagging this — it's a real blocker and the root cause analysis is spot-on.

Summary: workflow_dispatch runs complete successfully but don't register as status checks on the associated PRs, so auto-merge never fires. All 59 open PRs (#58–#118) are affected.

Why this needs a human: The fix requires modifying files under .github/workflows/ — either posting a commit status/check-run after successful E2E runs, or switching to pull_request-triggered E2E with proper filtering. Agents cannot create or edit workflow files (no workflows scope on GITHUB_TOKEN).

This is queued for @deepgram/devrel to pick up. The two viable approaches from the escalation:

1. Post a commit status via gh api at the end of the E2E workflow dispatch run
2. Switch E2E to pull_request triggers with path/branch filtering

Either way, a human needs to push the workflow change in a separate PR.

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Triaged by PM from #150

[lukeocodes]

Closing — the underlying issue (CI not running on PRs) was fixed by consolidating to lead-test.yml with scoped test-cli and proper synchronize/reopen event triggers. All 28 backlog CLI PRs now have passing CI and were merged.