Stale Actions run has no jobs; cancel and force-cancel409, delete403 after two weeks

[bearwork25]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Other

Discussion Details

An Actions run in a private repository has reported queued since19August2026. Its run and check suite timestamps have not changed. Authenticated API reads show zero jobs, zero check runs and zero artifacts.

Both normal cancellation and force cancellation return HTTP409: "Cannot cancel a workflow run that has not been queued yet." Website cancellation also fails. Deleting the run returns HTTP403: "Could not delete the workflow run", despite administrator access and the record being older than two weeks.

Metadata is preserved. We need a supported way to cancel or remove only this stale record without rerunning it, modifying other runs or enabling paid usage. We also need confirmation whether the orphaned record can still schedule a runner. Current jobs=0 is not being treated as that guarantee.

The account uses GitHub Free. Support Copilot received the details but could not resolve or route this backend state to a private human ticket. The available repository deletion form concerns deleting an entire repository and is not applicable.

Can GitHub staff provide a private channel to investigate this Actions record? Exact repository/run URLs and sanitized API responses can be supplied privately. Please do not suggest deleting the repository, rerunning the workflow or changing billing as a workaround.

[github-actions[bot]]

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