Schedule events hours late since Sep 30, missing Oct 2; manual dispatch works

[laporanhariankla-droid]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Schedule & Cron Jobs

Discussion Details

Main question

Why did scheduled workflow runs that previously supported delivery around 08:30 WIB (Asia/Jakarta, UTC+07:00) become hours late after September 29, 2026, and stop appearing on October 2, while manual dispatch still works?

Private repository, GitHub Free, main default branch. Repository name, run URLs/IDs, commit hashes, credentials and business data are omitted from this public report. Relevant identifiers can be supplied through a private GitHub channel if needed.

We understand schedule events have no exact-time SLA and can be delayed/dropped under load. This is about the change from a few minutes to several hours or no run creation, not second-perfect cron timing.

Timeline

All timestamps UTC; add seven hours for WIB.

Date	Observed run creation
Sep 29	Sender created 01:34:14; successful delivery 01:34:29–01:34:36 (08:34 WIB).
Sep 30	First preparation run created 03:02:16; configured slots 00:00, 00:30, 01:00. Sender created 06:52:10; configured sender slots 01:25, 01:35. Its hosted job started 06:52:13, three seconds later.
Oct 1	Preparation created 03:08:51. Watchdog created 07:50:11 instead of configured 01:50.
Oct 2	Zero repository-wide schedule run objects as of 08:36 UTC (15:36 WIB), confirmed via REST API. Manual preparation and delivery succeeded today.

Sep 29 and Sep 30 used the same commit, without an intervening code change. The delay is in run creation, not hours waiting for a runner after a run already exists.

Checks

• Workflow files on the default branch match pushed source.
• Private repository, not archived/disabled; Actions enabled; workflows active.
• No queued/in-progress runs remained when checked.
• Manual dispatch starts hosted runners in seconds and succeeds.
• Account is below included Actions-minute allowance in both September and October; no evidence of minute-quota exhaustion.
• API requests return HTTP 200 with ample rate limit.
• Source changes pushed by the repository owner.
• All three production workflows disabled/re-enabled and verified active October 2. This is an attempted recovery, not proof tomorrow is fixed.

Independent diagnostic

A temporary workflow was pushed before today's 02:23, 02:28 and 02:33 UTC slots. One ubuntu-latest job only prints trigger/cron/commit/time. No checkout, dependencies, secrets, external APIs, cache, concurrency or job-level condition.

Manual dispatch started within three seconds and completed in about three seconds. No scheduled run objects appeared by 02:35 UTC; the diagnostic was then disabled. It was newly added, so this is a bounded observation with a short registration window, not proof delayed events could never arrive.

Diagnostic cron: '23,28,33 2 2 10 *'.

Current production UTC schedules:

• Preparation: '7,17,27,37,47,57 0 * * *' and '7,17 1 * * *'.
• Sender: '16,21,26,31,36,41 1 * * *'.
• Watchdog: '50 1 * * *'.

A one-minute sender gap introduced October 1 was removed; current sender slots are five minutes apart. That mistake cannot explain September 30 (old sender slots were ten minutes apart), or the independently delayed preparation/watchdog runs. Documenting this so a configuration issue is not hidden.

The published Actions Job Delays incident October 1 was 14:47–17:56 UTC, outside these morning windows. No causal connection established.

Questions for GitHub / community

Support received the report but closed it because this account has self-service support only. No technical diagnosis supplied.

1. Was schedule-event delivery/registration degraded for some private repositories between Sep 30 and Oct 2?
2. Which checks distinguish a backlog, dropped events, stale registration, or account restriction when no run object exists?
3. Is there a supported way to restore/re-register a previously working schedule, or a private channel where GitHub staff can inspect workflow identifiers?

Related report today: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/209331 . Similar symptom on another private repository; context only, not proof of the same root cause.

Our goal is to explain and resolve why the existing morning workflow stopped triggering near its usual time. Thank you.

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