The GitHub Actions workflow that's been failing for weeks (and how to find yours)
Many popular open-source projects, even those with excellent software like trpc, have scheduled GitHub Actions workflows that consistently fail. These "always-red" workflows, such as trpc's "Lock Issues & PRs" or drizzle-orm's "Unpublish release," run frequently but produce no valuable output. The reason they go unnoticed is that routine failure notifications are filtered out, and a consistently red status becomes background noise. This leads developers to ignore potentially critical failures, including broken essential tasks like database backups. Leaving these workflows active and red is not only a waste of compute resources but also trains developers to disregard failure signals. To identify these issues, one can inspect the scheduled workflows in the Actions tab or use the gh run list command. The author suggests two honest solutions: fix the workflow or disable it entirely if it's no longer necessary. A disabled workflow is transparent, whereas a perpetually red one is a dangerous liability. The author has developed a free scanner at gitspider.com/scan to help identify such recurring CI failures.
gh run listcommand. The author suggests two honest solutions: fix the workflow or disable it entirely if it's no longer necessary. A disabled workflow is transparent, whereas a perpetually red one is a dangerous liability. The author has developed a free scanner at gitspider.com/scan to help identify such recurring CI failures.