CI had no KiCad installed, so the board's KiCad cross-check, 8 tests, was skipped on every PR. A change that broke it could only be caught by running tests by hand on a machine with KiCad. The fix pins the runner to Ubuntu 24.04 because its kicad package is 7.0.11, the version the check is tested on. ubuntu-latest had already moved on. Now the job fails loudly if KiCad is missing instead of skipping.
Recurring agent failure issue in sprue (B0tes)
What engineers report
A recurring agent failure problem in sprue (B0tes) that mostly hits the electrical engineer.
Failure pattern: agent / silent failure
Analyst note
From the Grok pain-radar digests, Nov 11-12 2026 (Nov 11 8:41 AM ET through Nov 12 5:41 AM ET digests plus the Haitch editions). Verified live 2026-11-12: issue/PR read; title and state confirmed.
What it costs a team
Modeled annual cost
$30,000
For a team of 5
Prototype delay
3 days
Modeled schedule slip per occurrence
Time lost
240 min
Per engineer per month, about 1 incidents
How the cost is modeled
240 min/month × 5 engineers × 12 months = 240 hours × $125/hour = $30,000
A modeled estimate with medium confidence. Swap in your own team size and loaded rate to size it for your team.
Engineering tools that address it
No engineering tool profile lists this error yet. Browse tools that connect to sprue (B0tes).
Evidence
More recurring errors in sprue (B0tes)
Sourced from public community reports. Costs and delays are modeled estimates, not measurements. Know a better source or a fix? Tell us at hello@productflo.io.