AI dev pipeline froze for 3 days due to a timestamp bug in review freshness check
Software startup Codens runs a fully automated AI development pipeline where agents write code, open pull requests, and an AI reviewer approves them for automatic merging. For three days, the system appeared healthy but no pull requests were merging, with 28 workflows silently stalled at the review-waiting step. The culprit was a defensive timestamp filter that only accepted reviews submitted after a recorded start time, designed to prevent merges on stale approvals. However, when cloud spot instances were reclaimed and workflows restarted, the engine reset that start timestamp to the current time, effectively pushing it past already-approved reviews. This caused the system to perpetually conclude no valid approval existed, deadlocking any workflow where recovery happened after an approval had already been submitted.
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