Hi everyone,

A quick follow-up: something I read today offers a slightly different
perspective on the proposal to use Airflow, which might help clarify my aim:

Read that*: AWS open-sources Pizza Bot: *email-style inbox for background
AI agents - The New Stack: https://thenewstack.io/aws-pizza-bot-agent-inbox/

I want our triage and security process to follow a similar model. Agents
would work mostly in the background, completing tasks autonomously and
surfacing to maintainers (in an inbox/to-do list fashion) only when human
decisions are required. We would have a shared `inbox` style places where
maintainers can log in and perform Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) actions.

Using Airflow to drive this allows us to tailor the experience closely to
our needs. It also showcases Airflow for this type of workload and
Dogfooding it offers numerous advantages over using a third-party solution
like Pizza Bot. Specifically, we could implement:

  - A shared inbox for the security team to review issues, make triage
decisions, trigger fix PRs, and handle release announcements.
  - Per-area inboxes for maintainers to make triage decisions on new and
outstanding PRs
  - Learning what Airflow still needs to support these kinds of workflows

This proposal heavily optimizes for minimizing human interaction by
automatically handling straightforward tasks and batching decisions to
surface only high-priority items with full context. It also eliminates the
Single Point of Failure (SPOF)—currently myself—by enabling the broader
community to share the load (but only the "make decisions" part; Airflow
will handle the execution).

Quick FAQ:

*How much Magpie is involved?*

On the runtime/execution side for Airflow: none. Magpie serves purely as a
starting point and interactive testing ground. It already contains useful
building blocks, mini-workflows, and integrations that we can learn from or
adapt. We can learn from or adapt these integrations and try out new things
However, embedding or weaving Magpie into Airflow DAGs is a non-goal. We
might re-use some code/SKILLs initially, but making this a long-term
dependency is not the goal. Possibly Magpie could eventually implement an
"export" feature to Airflow for any project wanting to automate its
triaging/security issue handling with Airflow - following our blueprint.
However, this is not a goal - it's more of a side effect of using similar
features while interactively testing things with Magpie and wanting to make
them into a DAG.

*Should we analyze stats on what works first?*

Yes. Absolutely. We have, and we will continue analyzing stats while
incrementally moving some workflows to run via Airflow. I have already
gathered and shared these stats from my manual runs with Magpie and we can
continue doing so. Look at my past messages where I shared stats, drew
conclusions, and decided on next steps. Magpie provides the tooling to run
experiments and evaluate results quickly. Transitioning this to a
continuous, automated Airflow setup removes the single point of failure
(SPOF) and allows us to iterate and improve these workflows more
collaboratively. Since the decisions we make will have a continuous,
immediate effect once implemented and deployed in our "Airflow driver," we
will hopefully make them more consciously.

Best regards,
Jarek


On Thu, Sep 10, 2026 at 7:02 PM Jarek Potiuk <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Following up on today's Dev call, Shubham will share a proposal document
> soon detailing our discussion from yesterday. However, I wanted to outline
> the idea here first to clear up a few misconceptions that arose during
> brief conversations on Slack and with PMC members. If agreed upon, this
> might eventually become an AIP.
>
>
> *TL;DR: I propose experimenting with dogfooding Airflow deterministic +
> agentic workflows to handle our triaging and security issue handling*
>
> *Current State*
> We currently use agentic automation via "Magpie" SKILLs (
> https://magpie.apache.org/) for both areas, with varying success:
>
>   - Security issue handling: Working well, processing over 60 issues
> monthly (a 10x increase over six months ago).
>   - PR triaging: Partially effective (e.g., filtering bad PRs, with
> potential to automate closing large PRs from inexperienced contributors).
>
> *The Problem*
>
> Currently, these workflows require a "push" model where I (in Claude CLI)
> initiate actions, confirm proposals, and approve decisions. Regularly. I
> initiate them regularly. Others might also initiate actions, but very few
> people have done so. This creates a Single Point of Failure (SPOF). IMHO -
> we need to shift to an "automated pull" model to eliminate this SPOF and
> allow more community members to act as Human-In-The-Loop (HITL) reviewers
> without needing manual initiation. This would also allow more people to
> contribute to and review those workflows.
>
> *The Proposal*
>
> Instead of relying on local CLI pushes, we can translate these learnings
> into Airflow DAGs. Roughly 60%–80% of triage actions are deterministic and
> require no human intervention. For the rest, the automated workflow would
> run in the background and trigger "pull" notifications (e.g., Slack alerts)
> when bulk human decisions are needed.
>
> *Key Benefits & Features:*
>
>   - Shared UI: A cloud-hosted Airflow UI allows multiple maintainers to
> review and approve decisions.
>   - Community-Driven Workflows: Workflows can live in a new Airflow repo
> (e.g., airflow-agentic-workflows), allowing anyone to modify DAGs via pull
> requests.
>   - No External Dependencies: While Magpie SKILLs can still be used for
> local testing or syncs if preferred, using Magpie will not be required for
> PMC/Dev team members.
>   - They workflows **might** by somewhat synced with Magpie in either way
> (and likely I will start by transplanting parts of the process from Magpie
> to Airflow Dags (and implement some features for that in Magpie) . But
> there will be exactly "0" Magpie components in Airflow Agentic Dags.
>   - Dogfooding: Managing Airflow with our latest Helm chart provides
> direct operational feedback for the community—feedback that we currently
> miss.
>   - We could make this a "use case" demonstrating how Airflow Agentic
> workflows helped solve our problem, which could confirm that Airflow is
> ideally suited for these kinds of workflows.
>
> *Note on Workflow Architecture (Addressing Vikram's feedback):*
>
> Regarding REACT vs. REPL: Triage and security handling fit the REACT
> pattern (Reason -> Act -> Iterate) due to the continuous stream of incoming
> PRs and issues. It's literally -> get issues, evaluate them, make actions
> (with or without human) and go back to the beginning.
> REPL relies more on immediate code-execution loops for task
> implementation, whereas our needs align with REACT's iterative reasoning
> over time.
>
> Let's discuss further in this thread. Looking forward to your comments and
> feedback.
>
> Best regards,
> Jarek
>
>

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