Unable to re-run multiple specific failed jobs via the GitHub Actions API

[afontan]

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👋 hey there!

I was trying to use the GitHub Actions API/CLI to re-run a subset of failed jobs from a workflow, and it seems this isn’t currently possible — though it feels like it should be.

At the moment, we can:

• rerun an specific job
• rerun all failed jobs

However, there’s no way to re-run multiple specific jobs (for example, 2 out of 5 failed ones). If I want to retry them I need to do it one by one calling the rerun single job endpoint.

When I try to re-run a second job individually, I get the following error:

{
  "message": "Only jobs from the current attempt can be re-run",
  "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest/actions/workflow-runs#re-run-a-job-from-a-workflow-run",
gh: Only jobs from the current attempt can be re-run (HTTP 403)
  "status": "403"
}

This suggests that after one job re-run creates a new attempt, the remaining failed jobs can no longer be retried individually.

Question:
Is this limitation intentional?
Given that the API already supports re-running all failed jobs, it seems like re-running a list of specific jobs should also be possible — or at least exposed as an option.

[Danindu05]

Great question — this is actually a known limitation of the current GitHub Actions API design.

When you re-run a single job using the API (POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/jobs/{job_id}/rerun), GitHub creates a new workflow attempt behind the scenes. Because of that, any remaining failed jobs are now associated with the previous attempt, and the API’s restriction (HTTP 403: only jobs from the current attempt can be re-run) kicks in.

In short:

✅ You can re-run a specific job from the latest attempt.

🚫 Once a new attempt starts, older failed jobs can’t be retried individually because they’re considered part of an archived attempt.

There’s currently no official endpoint to re-run multiple selected jobs in a single call — only rerun_all_failed_jobs or one-by-one re-runs.

Possible workarounds:

Use the gh api
command to script multiple single-job re-runs sequentially.

Or create a custom workflow dispatch that accepts job names or IDs as input, then dynamically triggers only those jobs.

If you want this feature natively, consider opening or upvoting a feature request on github/feedback
— this specific limitation has come up in similar threads before, so adding your use case helps prioritize it.

Would definitely be useful to have a rerun_selected_jobs endpoint exposed — your reasoning makes sense!

[github-actions[bot]]

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