GitHub Actions startup_failure / BuildFailed creates zero jobs

[DonaldJT]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Actions Runner

Discussion Details

I am seeing a persistent GitHub Actions failure in a private repository where workflows fail before GitHub creates any jobs.

Symptoms

• Workflow status: completed
• Conclusion: startup_failure
• Path reported by GitHub: BuildFailed
• Zero workflow jobs are created
• No runner is assigned
• No checkout, npm install, type-check, or build step ever begins
• No job logs exist because the job graph is never constructed

Environment

• Private GitHub repository
• GitHub-hosted runner: ubuntu-latest
• Node.js 22
• Standard workflow using:
  • actions/checkout@v4
  • actions/setup-node@v4
  • npm ci
  • npm run typecheck
  • npm run build

Exact affected PR head SHA

8d05eb6fc8beee119253320cc9f387eddc271183

Workflow ID

344352413

Affected workflow runs

• 34616426614 — run #48
• 34637672493 — run Should be clearer that discussion search supports same filters as issue search (and ignore whitespace) #49
• 34637682477 — run Feature Request: Search bar for the "Repositories" page #50
• 34656407653 — run Feature Request: Copying code while reviewing changes #51
• 34656413652 — run Allow to move individual comments to new thread or merge them into an existing thread #52

Every one of these runs ends during startup before any job is created.

Troubleshooting already performed

• Verified the workflow YAML.
• Confirmed the PR head SHA did not change.
• Closed and reopened the PR to generate fresh pull_request events.
• Generated multiple new workflow runs.
• Every fresh run still ends with startup_failure.
• Attempted to rerun the failed workflow, but GitHub reports that the workflow cannot be retried.
• Confirmed through the GitHub API that the affected runs contain zero jobs.
• The identical commit successfully type-checks, builds, and deploys through Vercel.

This appears to occur before the workflow reaches a GitHub-hosted runner and before GitHub constructs the job graph.

Has anyone encountered this specific startup_failure / BuildFailed / zero-jobs condition, or is there a repository/workflow backend state that GitHub staff need to reset?

Any guidance would be appreciated.

[github-actions[bot]]

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