Workflow run stuck in queued with zero jobs — a recurring class of bug, still unresolved

[bdbarnett]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Other

Discussion Details

A workflow run in a public repository has been queued since 2026-08-19 — 22
days — and cannot be reached by any API call. It is not a job waiting for a
runner: the run never expanded into jobs at all.

Run: https://github.com/PyDevices/pygraphics/actions/runs/32219727413

GET /repos/PyDevices/pygraphics/actions/runs/32219727413
  status=queued  conclusion=null
  created_at=2026-08-19T05:31:17Z
  updated_at=2026-08-19T05:31:17Z     <- never changed
  run_attempt=1

GET /repos/PyDevices/pygraphics/actions/runs/32219727413/jobs
  jobs: []                            <- zero jobs, ever

The API's answers contradict each other and the run's own record:

Call	Response
GET /runs/32219727413	status: queued
POST /runs/32219727413/cancel	409 — "has not been queued yet"
POST /runs/32219727413/force-cancel	409 — "has not been queued yet"
POST /runs/32219727413/rerun	403 — "This workflow is already running"
DELETE /runs/32219727413	403 — "Could not delete the workflow run"
gh run cancel	"Cannot cancel a workflow run that is completed"

The run reports itself as queued, cancel reports it was never queued, rerun
reports it is running, and delete requires a completed run — which it cannot
become. Those four cannot all be true, which is what makes this a backend state
inconsistency rather than a misconfiguration.

How it started: the run was orphaned when a commit removed the workflow
definition (.github/workflows/docs.yml) while this run was already queued. The
removal was deliberate — ReadTheDocs replaced MkDocs as the documentation
builder.

Already ruled out:

• Restoring the workflow definition returns the workflow to state: active but
  does not release the run. Tried twice, 2026-08-20 and 2026-09-03, retrying
  cancel / force-cancel / delete in between, reverting afterwards both times.
• The workflow definition is fine — a fresh dispatch of the restored definition
  completed successfully.
• gh run delete uses the same DELETE endpoint and gets the same 403.
• This is the only run in the organisation, across 26 repositories, that has
  ever done this. It is not reproducible on demand.

This is not an isolated report. Searching before posting turned up the same
failure repeatedly, none of them resolved:

• #202511 — stuck Pages
  re-run, cancel returns 409
• #204118 — Pages
  workflow stuck queued; cancel, force-cancel (409) and delete (403) all fail
• #202969 — permanently
  stuck queued, cancellation returns HTTP 500
• #196717 — Actions /
  Pages workflows stuck queued, cannot be cancelled
• #135366 — "Cannot
  cancel a workflow re-run that has not yet queued"
• #51458 — stuck queued
  over 24h, cannot cancel

The common shape across all of them: a run whose public status disagrees with
the scheduler's, zero jobs, and every removal endpoint refusing for a different
and mutually exclusive reason.

What I am asking for: two things. Confirmation that this is a platform-side
inconsistency with no repository-side remedy — and, given how often it recurs,
whether there is any plan for a user-reachable way to clear a run in this state.
Right now the only exit appears to be manual intervention by GitHub, requested
one discussion at a time.

Impact: low but permanent. The run reads as perpetually active, so it
appears in every CI health sweep and cannot honestly be filtered out.

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