Problem Description

Our npm publishing workflow systematically fails to trigger automatically when Release-Please creates tags, requiring manual re-tagging of the same commit to successfully publish packages to npm.

Observed Behavior

1. ✅ Release-Please creates proper release commits and tags (e.g., v2.2.0)
2. ❌ Publish workflow (on: push: tags: - "v*") does not trigger automatically
3. ✅ Manual re-tagging of the same commit immediately triggers the workflow and succeeds
4. 🔄 This pattern has been consistent across multiple releases (v2.0.1, v2.1.0, v2.2.0)

Root Cause Analysis

Based on research and testing, this appears to be caused by multiple GitHub Actions limitations:

1. GitHub Actions Fundamental Limitation

• Actions in a workflow run can't trigger new workflow runs when using GITHUB_TOKEN
• Release-Please uses GITHUB_TOKEN to create tags
• The publish workflow listening for push: tags: doesn't get triggered
• Manual re-tagging works because it's done by a different actor

2. Webhook Rate Limiting (2024)

• GitHub introduced new webhook rate limits: 1500 triggered events per repository every 10 seconds
• Release-Please may hit this limit during rapid commit/release/tag creation
• This explains the intermittent failures

3. Timing Race Conditions

• Release-Please creates commits, releases, and tags in rapid succession
• GitHub's webhook delivery system can't keep up with the sequence
• Manual re-tagging gives webhooks time to process properly

Evidence

• Search results show this is a known issue affecting many projects using Release-Please v4
• GitHub community discussions confirm workflows cannot reliably trigger other workflows
• The issue has been reported across 2024-2025 timeframe

Potential Solutions

Option 1: Use Personal Access Token (PAT)

Replace GITHUB_TOKEN with a PAT in release-please workflow:

- uses: googleapis/release-please-action@v4
  with:
    token: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_PLEASE_TOKEN }}  # PAT instead of GITHUB_TOKEN

Option 2: Use workflow_run Event

Change publish workflow to trigger on workflow completion:

on:
  workflow_run:
    workflows: ["Release Please"]
    types: [completed]

Option 3: Combine Workflows

Move npm publishing into the release-please workflow itself using the releases_created output.

Option 4: Add Workflow Dispatch Trigger

Add manual trigger capability as fallback:

on:
  push:
    tags:
      - "v*"
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      tag:
        description: 'Tag to publish'
        required: true

Current Workaround

Until a permanent solution is implemented, the current workaround is:

# Delete and re-create the tag
git tag -d v<version>
git push origin :v<version>
git tag v<version> <commit-sha>
git push origin v<version>

References

• GitHub Community Discussion #27028
• GitHub Community Discussion #25281
• Release-Please Action Issues

Next Steps

We should implement one of the proposed solutions to eliminate the need for manual re-tagging on every release.