Scheduled Actions never create runs on active private repo; manual jobs succeed

[agleeson-afk]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Schedule & Cron Jobs

Discussion Details

On 21 October 2026, an active private repository owned by my active personal account has no recorded schedule events. Actions is enabled, the default branch is main, workflow files are on main, all actions are allowed, and there are no Actions policies.

• A one-off 0 11 21 10 * cron was on main 12 minutes before its 11:00 UTC slot. No run record appeared.
• Changed daily expressions off the hour to 17 9 * * * and 17 10 * * *, with a gate to select 10:17 Europe/Dublin. Date-limited diagnostic 27,47 15 21 10 * was deployed before 15:22 UTC. Neither slot created a run.
• Around 15:30 UTC disabled and immediately re-enabled the workflow. GitHub confirmed enabled successfully.
• Manual dispatch of the production workflow succeeds: tests, public-source scan, durable history and report artifact all pass.
• Added a separate minimal workflow on main before 15:30 UTC, with permissions: {}, no checkout, secrets or network calls, and one shell step printing UTC time and trigger. Cron 32,37,42,47,52,57 15 21 10 *. Manual dispatch succeeds. None of its scheduled slots produced a run by 16:34 UTC.
• The repository Actions run API filtered by event=schedule returns total_count: 0. No failed/skipped workflow run exists; no run is created at all.
• Temporary diagnostic timers are now retired; the off-hour daily schedule remains enabled.

GitHub status incident https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/nms1dpzmh9d9 was announced at 14:52 UTC and includes Actions, but the first miss was at 11:00 UTC. We cannot prove they are related. I have checked similar recent scheduling discussions and the official troubleshooting documentation.

Are schedule registration or event-delivery problems known for private repositories today? What further checks are available when no schedule run exists at all, while manual jobs work? Can staff check whether the scheduler is registered and whether events are being dropped? Private identifiers can be supplied through an appropriate private support channel if requested. Our plan does not include private technical support tickets.

No private repository names, run links, email addresses or credentials are included in this report.

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[ronitgupta138]

If manual dispatch works fine, check your repository billing limits:

On private repositories, GitHub Actions scheduled runs require available included minutes. If your account spending limit is set to $0 and the included monthly minutes are exhausted (or if the repo has had zero commit activity on main for 60 days), GitHub automatically pauses scheduled cron triggers without failing or showing an error.

Also make sure the cron is on the default branch (main) — GitHub ignores schedules defined on topic branches.