Scheduled (cron) GitHub Actions workflows never fire — new account, multiple repos tested

[tjj0rdan]

Scheduled (cron) GitHub Actions workflows have never fired on my account, across two different repositories, over a full day of testing. Manual workflow_dispatch runs of the exact same workflows succeed reliably and quickly every time (typically 1-4 minutes). GitHub Support wouldn't let me raise a ticket for this (I'm on a free personal account), so posting here in case anyone from GitHub or the community has seen this before.

Account: created 2026-08-26 (~1 day old at the time of testing)

What I tested:

• tjj0rdan/fara-monitor (private): .github/workflows/daily-fetch.yml, cron: "15 7 * * *" — missed its 07:15 UTC production slot on 2026-08-27.
• Same repo/workflow: temporarily retargeted the cron to a near-future slot the same day as a live test — did not fire (checked with 12+ min buffer).
• Same repo, a second independent workflow (scheduler-probe.yml, trivial echo job, its own schedule trigger) — did not fire (checked with 30+ min buffer, zero runs of any kind recorded).
• A brand-new, unrelated scratch repo (tjj0rdan/scheduler-scratch-test) created purely to isolate the issue — trivial workflow, own schedule trigger — also did not fire (checked with 40+ min buffer).
• gh run list across all of the above shows only workflow_dispatch-triggered runs; zero schedule-triggered runs exist anywhere on this account, on any repo.

Ruled out:

• Not a fork
• Workflow state is active (not disabled) on all tested workflows
• Repo actions/permissions: enabled: true, allowed_actions: "all"
• Not the 60-day-inactivity auto-disable (everything here is 1 day old)
• Not a billing/Actions-minutes issue (manual dispatches succeed instantly and repeatedly)
• No relevant incident on githubstatus.com at the times tested
• No "GitHub Actions is currently disabled for this repository/account" banner visible anywhere in the UI

Given the account age, my working theory is some kind of anti-abuse/trust restriction on scheduled Actions for brand-new accounts, but I can't confirm that from public docs, and Support (via the AI triage) couldn't confirm or deny it either — it explicitly said this would need a human/backend review.

Has anyone seen this before, or know if there's a known ramp-up period for scheduled triggers on new accounts? Happy to provide more detail if useful.

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