Scheduled (cron) Actions workflows never fire — schedule trigger not dispatching

[executivedezign]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Schedule & Cron Jobs

Discussion Details

I have a private repository where the schedule trigger has never fired successfully,
across three separate workflow registrations, including a maximally trivial diagnostic
workflow. All other trigger types (workflow_dispatch, push) work correctly and
reliably on the same repo. This looks similar to other reports I've seen in this
category (e.g. discussions #185355, #185373, #185081) but none of the suggested fixes
(manual trigger once, re-commit to resync, full recreate) have resolved it.
What I've tried and confirmed:

1. A workflow with cron entries 33,48 13 * * 1-5 and 3,18,33,48 14-19 * * 1-5,
   created at a known timestamp. Zero scheduled fires across 5 consecutive expected
   occurrences over the following ~90 minutes.
2. Deleted and recreated the same workflow under the same filename — GitHub
   re-registered it with the SAME workflow ID and original created_at timestamp,
   suggesting internal state wasn't reset. Still zero fires across 3 more expected
   occurrences.
3. Renamed to a new filename and new job name — this registered as a genuinely new
   workflow (fresh ID, fresh created_at). Still zero scheduled fires on subsequent
   expected occurrences.
4. Created a minimal diagnostic "canary" workflow, unrelated to the above, with the
   simplest possible cron: */5 * * * * (every 5 minutes) and a single echo step.
   Zero fires in 10+ minutes (should have fired at least once, likely twice, if the
   scheduler were working at all).
   What does work on the same repo:

• workflow_dispatch (manual trigger via gh workflow run / API) succeeds every
  single time, immediately, for all workflows above.
• A separate push-triggered workflow has fired correctly and reliably on every push
  to the repo for two days running, with no issues.
  Configuration verified via API (all correct):
• GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/permissions → {"enabled":true,"allowed_actions":"all"}
• All schedule-based workflows show "state":"active" via
  GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/workflows
• All workflow files are present on the repo's default branch
• No repository-inactivity issue (very frequent commits/pushes)
• Checked githubstatus.com — no active incidents affecting Actions
  Has anyone found a real fix for this beyond "wait and hope," or is this something that
  needs GitHub staff to manually reset scheduling state for a repo? Happy to share the
  repo name/workflow IDs privately with a GitHub staff member if that helps diagnose it.

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