Orphaned "BuildFailed" workflow (deleted state) intercepts all events — no jobs start repo-wide

[beathub-Official]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Workflow Configuration

Discussion Details

Every Actions event in my repository produces a startup_failure run with 0 jobs, and no real
workflow ever starts. This is repo-wide, not a broken YAML file. Posting in case anyone has seen
this, and because it looks like a registry-side defect rather than something self-serve.

The orphan

GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/workflows/344860610 returns:

• name: "" (empty)
• path: "BuildFailed"
• state: "deleted"
• created_at: 2026-08-28T21:00:56+02:00

It does not appear in GET /actions/workflows. PUT .../disable returns 403 "Unable to disable a
workflow that is not active". DELETE returns 404. No file named BuildFailed exists anywhere in
the repo, though GitHub exposes a blob URL for it that 404s.

The record was created in the same second as an ordinary push. There was no workflow file change in
that commit.

What I've ruled out

• .github/workflows/ is byte-identical between the default branch and the feature branch (same git
  blob SHAs). Three normal workflows are registered and visible in the sidebar.
• No rulesets, no branch protection, no required workflows.
• Actions enabled, all actions allowed, no spending limit message. Failure happens before any job is
  created.
• No workflow_run triggers in the repo (I saw a similar report caused by a malformed workflow_run
  glob — that isn't this).
• Not billing. Failures are pre-job with 0s / -1s durations.

Why the usual workaround doesn't apply

The documented fix for a single wedged workflow is to copy it to a new file path so a fresh entity
registers. I created a brand-new 12-line workflow at a new path on the default branch containing
only an echo step. New entity registered, and the run still fails at startup with 0 jobs.

A workflow with no dependencies and one echo step cannot start. That suggests the whole repository's
dispatch is affected rather than one workflow entity.

Also tried without success: close/reopen PR, disable and re-enable Actions, empty commit, renaming
the CI workflow, workflow_dispatch on the real CI workflow, and re-running a previously green run
(that rerun also failed at startup and overwrote the green record).

Timeline

Last healthy run was 2026-08-28T10:41:59Z. Everything after 21:00:56 that day fails. There were
Actions incidents on 26–27 Aug; this appeared after those were marked resolved, which makes me
suspect leftover trigger-database state.

I filed a support ticket with all of this and it was auto-closed by a virtual assistant pointing at
self-service resources, so I'm posting here.

Has anyone seen an orphaned workflow record in deleted state intercepting dispatch like this, and
is there anything self-serve I've missed?

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[0xmarkhydra]

Another confirmed case on a private repository under this account. Every push/PR is intercepted before job creation by an orphan workflow registration with the exact same signature:\n\n- workflow_id: 345106030\n- path: BuildFailed\n- name: empty\n- state: deleted\n- created_at: 2026-08-29T11:20:25+07:00\n- conclusion on generated runs: startup_failure\n- jobs/check-runs: 0\n\nI ruled out repository YAML and runner configuration with a minimal echo-only workflow, GitHub-hosted and self-hosted runners, and actionlint. I also purged all 594 runs belonging to the orphan ID; the workflow endpoint temporarily returned 404, but the same workflow ID re-materialized on the next event. Disabling Actions, purging the orphan run, re-enabling Actions, and triggering a fresh event produced the same result again.\n\nThis appears to require a backend purge/reindex of the orphan workflow registration. If GitHub staff need the private repository or run URLs, I can provide them through a private support channel. Please correlate this account with workflow_id 345106030 and remove/reindex the stuck BuildFailed registration.