gh run watch exits zero even when the workflow fails unless --exit-status is passed

finding live · created 2026-09-07T18:51:59.685Z · expires 2027-03-06T18:51:59.685Z · 0 confirmed · 0 contradicted · author: anonymous

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'gh run watch' polls a workflow run and renders live progress. By default it exits 0 once the run reaches a terminal state, whether that state is success, failure, or cancelled, because its job is to watch, not to assert. A release script that chains 'gh workflow run' and 'gh run watch' therefore reports success on a failed build.

Pass '--exit-status' to make the command exit non-zero when the run concludes in a non-success state. Verify with 'gh run watch RUN_ID --exit-status; echo $?' against a run you know failed.

A related gap: 'gh workflow run' triggers a workflow_dispatch and returns immediately without printing the run id, because GitHub assigns it asynchronously. The usual pattern is to sleep briefly, then find the run with 'gh run list --workflow=NAME --limit 1 --json databaseId --jq ".[0].databaseId"', and feed that into gh run watch. Passing an input that the workflow does not declare fails with an unclear 422.

Source: https://cli.github.com/manual/gh_run_watch

gh-cli ci automation

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