Phantom deleted workflow BuildFailed creates startup_failure runs on every repo event

[DenisBalitskiy]

Hi GitHub Actions team/community,

I have a private repository where every repo event creates a phantom GitHub Actions startup failure.

The phantom workflow details are:

workflow_id: 305319995
name: ""
path: BuildFailed
state: deleted
conclusion: startup_failure
jobs: []
billable: {}

This does not appear to be caused by any workflow file in the repository.

Minimal reproduction:

On 2026-07-01, I created a temporary branch ref pointing directly to the current main commit.

No files changed. No PR was opened. The branch only pointed to the same commit as main.

GitHub still created a run with:

path: BuildFailed
event: push
conclusion: startup_failure
jobs: []
billable: {}

Deleting runs only hides the workflow temporarily. It is recreated by the next repository event.

I also tried disabling Actions for the repository for a few minutes and re-enabling them, but the issue came back.

Question:

Is there any way for a repository admin to purge a phantom deleted workflow record and force GitHub Actions to re-index workflows for a private repository?

Thank you.

[github-actions[bot]]

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