feat: add automatic AB# tagging from branch name

[joshjohanning]

Summary

Add new add-work-item-from-branch input that extracts work item IDs from the head branch name and adds AB#xxx to the PR body if not already present. Each extracted ID is validated against Azure DevOps before being added, preventing false positives from version numbers or other numeric patterns in branch names.

Resolves #151

Changes

• New add-work-item-from-branch input -- extracts digit sequences from branch names preceded by a separator (/, -, _) or start of string
• Always validates extracted IDs -- requires azure-devops-token and azure-devops-organization; each ID is checked against Azure DevOps and only valid work items are added to the PR body. Invalid IDs are skipped with a warning.
• Merged with main -- includes the breaking node20 to node24 runtime upgrade, and the add-work-item-table feature (which replaced the old append-work-item-title input)
• Sanitized branch name in job summary -- backticks in branch names are escaped to prevent markdown injection
• Cleaned up dangling append-work-item-title references from test mocks

Supported branch formats

Branch name	Extracted
task/12345/make-it-better	AB#12345
task/12345-make-it-better	AB#12345
task/12345	AB#12345
task-12345	AB#12345
12345-make-it-better	AB#12345
12345make-it-better	AB#12345
12345	AB#12345

Multiple IDs in a single branch name are also supported (e.g. fix/12345/67890 adds both AB#12345 and AB#67890), and IDs already referenced in the PR body are skipped.

Design decisions

• No digit-length minimum on the regex -- since every extracted ID is validated against Azure DevOps, there's no need for an arbitrary 3+ digit floor. Numbers like 2024 from hotfix-2024-something are safely filtered out by the Azure DevOps validation.
• validate-work-item-exists is independent -- add-work-item-from-branch has validation built in (it must confirm numbers are real work items). validate-work-item-exists separately controls whether human-written AB# references in commits/PR body are validated. These are separate concerns; a user can enable branch extraction while trusting manually-written references.
• Branch extraction runs before commit/PR checks -- so newly added AB# tags satisfy subsequent check-pull-request validation.

Usage

- uses: joshjohanning/azdo_commit_message_validator@v4
  with:
    add-work-item-from-branch: true
    check-pull-request: true
    check-commits: true
    fail-if-missing-workitem-commit-link: true
    link-commits-to-pull-request: true
    azure-devops-organization: my-azdo-org
    azure-devops-token: ${{ secrets.AZURE_DEVOPS_PAT }}

Test coverage

• Unit tests for extractWorkItemIdsFromBranch (various branch formats, duplicates, empty input, short numbers)
• Integration tests for the full flow (add tag, skip existing, empty body, multiple IDs, partial existing)
• Tests for validation: skip invalid IDs, skip all if none valid, fail if token/org missing
• 105 tests passing

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR implements a new add-ab-tag-from-branch input that automatically extracts Azure DevOps work item IDs from the head branch name and appends the corresponding AB#xxx tags to the PR body if not already present. This addresses feature request #151 from users who want branch names like task/12345/fix-bug to automatically populate the PR body with AB#12345.

Changes:

• New add-work-item-from-branch input and its extraction/update logic (extractWorkItemIdsFromBranch, addWorkItemsToPRBody functions)
• Comprehensive test suite covering happy path, duplicate prevention, empty body, multiple IDs, and disabled scenarios
• Documentation updates (README, action.yml) and version bump to 3.3.0

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 5 out of 7 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
src/index.js	Core implementation: new regex pattern, extractWorkItemIdsFromBranch export, addWorkItemsToPRBody async function, and wiring into run()
__tests__/index.test.js	Unit tests for extractWorkItemIdsFromBranch and integration tests for Add AB# tag from branch scenarios
action.yml	New add-work-item-from-branch input declaration
README.md	New feature listed in Key Features, new row in the Inputs table
package.json / package-lock.json	Minor version bump to 3.3.0
badges/coverage.svg	Updated coverage badge from 85.12% to 86.26%

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 5 out of 7 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

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Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

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Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

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[joshjohanning]

Moving this back to draft while I work through the false positive problem with branch name extraction.

The core issue: extracting bare numbers from branch names (e.g. task/12345/fix-bug) and treating them as work item IDs will inevitably produce false positives. Numbers like 2024 from hotfix-2024-bugfix can match real work items in Azure DevOps, so validation alone doesn't solve it -- it just confirms the work item exists, not that the branch intended to reference it.

The 3-digit minimum helps with very short numbers (v2, release-1-2-3) but doesn't help with year-like numbers or other common numeric patterns in branch names.

Still thinking through the best approach here. Some options under consideration:

• Requiring a specific prefix pattern (e.g. only match numbers after task/, bug/, feature/, etc.)
• Making the minimum digit count configurable
• Accepting the trade-off and documenting the known limitation clearly

Will update once I have a cleaner solution.

cc @davetevans

[davetevans]

I would vote for the prefix pattern matching task/, bug/ etc.