POST /user/repos: installation token returns 403 Rate Limit Exceeded with 4994 remaining

[nunomarquescorreia]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

API

Body

Creating a private repository with POST /user/repos using a GitHub App installation access token returns:

• HTTP 403: Rate Limit Exceeded
• x-ratelimit-limit: 5000
• x-ratelimit-remaining: 4994
• Retry-After: absent
• x-accepted-github-permissions: administration=write; repository_creation=write

The App has Administration: write. Installation-token authentication and repository listing succeed. API version: 2026-03-10.

The current endpoint documentation explicitly lists GitHub App installation access tokens and Administration write as supported:
https://docs.github.com/en/rest/repos/repos#create-a-repository-for-the-authenticated-user

Could a secondary rate limit, content-creation restriction, or GitHub App limitation explain this response despite the available primary quota?

What is the supported mechanism for autonomous private repository creation while retaining selected-repository access and least privilege?

[github-actions[bot]]

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[4Raisan]

A nonzero x-ratelimit-remaining only rules out exhausting the primary bucket. GitHub also has secondary limits, including limits on content-creating requests; a 403 can therefore occur while primary quota remains. The absence of Retry-After does not establish the cause. See https://docs.github.com/en/rest/using-the-rest-api/rate-limits-for-the-rest-api.

For a suspected secondary limit, stop concurrent creation attempts and wait at least a minute before a controlled retry; repeated retries can prolong throttling. If one isolated request still fails, preserve the full error body, UTC timestamp and x-github-request-id for Support, with credentials removed.

For repository creation, follow the endpoint’s documented token types and permissions rather than assuming an installation token is unsupported. Also distinguish the owner: use POST /orgs/{org}/repos for an organization, and /user/repos for the authenticated-user route. Whether a newly created repository is available to a selected-repository installation is a separate access question; verify the installation’s repository list before subsequent operations.

Disclosure: drafted with OpenAI GPT-6.