Status checks

Status checks show whether commits meet the conditions set for a repository. They are usually created by external systems, such as continuous integration builds, tests, code scanning, or deployment checks.

Status checks help reviewers and maintainers understand whether a pull request is ready to merge. A check can show that work is still running, that changes passed validation, or that something needs attention.

Anyone with write permissions to a repository can set the state for any status check in the repository.

If status checks are required for a protected branch, they must pass before the pull request can be merged. See About protected branches.

Types of status checks on GitHub

There are two types of status checks on GitHub:

Type	Detail level	Created by
Checks	Detailed output, annotations, and messages.	GitHub Apps, including GitHub Actions.
Commit statuses	A simpler status for a commit.	External services and integrations.

Organization owners and users with push access to a repository can create checks and commit statuses with GitHub's API. See REST API endpoints for checks and REST API endpoints for commit statuses.

Checks

Checks can include build logs, test results, annotations, and links to more detail. In a pull request, the Checks tab helps you understand which validations ran and why a check passed or failed.

When a check points to a specific line, details can also appear in the Files tab of the pull request. This helps reviewers connect automated feedback to the code being changed.

Skipping and requesting checks for individual commits

Some repositories allow checks to be skipped or requested for individual commits. This can be useful when a check is not relevant to a specific change, or when checks are not requested automatically.

For GitHub Actions workflows, you can skip workflow runs triggered by the push and pull_request events by including a skip instruction in your commit message. See Skipping workflow runs.

Alternatively, to skip or request all checks for your commit, add one of the following trailer lines to the end of your commit message:

• To skip checks for a commit, type your commit message and a short, meaningful description of your changes. After your commit description, before the closing quotation, add two empty lines followed by skip-checks: true:

  $ git commit -m "Update README
  >
  >
  skip-checks: true"
  

• To request checks for a commit, type your commit message and a short, meaningful description of your changes. After your commit description, before the closing quotation, add two empty lines followed by request-checks: true:

  $ git commit -m "Refactor usability tests
  >
  >
  request-checks: true"
  

By default, Git automatically removes consecutive newlines. To leave the commit message exactly as you entered it, use the --cleanup=verbatim option on your commit. For more information, see --cleanup=<mode> in the Git documentation.

Check statuses and conclusions

Checks move through statuses as they run, then receive a conclusion when they finish. Some statuses cannot be set manually and are reserved for GitHub Actions.

Status	Description	GitHub Actions only?
completed	The check run completed and has a conclusion (see below).	No
expected	The check run is waiting for a status to be reported.	Yes
failure	The check run failed.	No
in_progress	The check run is in progress.	No
pending	The check run is at the front of the queue but the group-based concurrency limit has been reached.	Yes
queued	The check run has been queued.	No
requested	The check run has been created but has not been queued.	Yes
startup_failure	The check suite failed during startup. This status is not applicable to check runs.	Yes
waiting	The check run is waiting for a deployment protection rule to be satisfied.	Yes

When a check has a status of completed, it has a conclusion. A successful conclusion usually means the check does not block merging. A failure, timeout, or action-required conclusion usually means someone must review the details before the pull request can merge.

Conclusion	Description
action_required	The check run provided required actions upon its completion. For more information, see Using the REST API to interact with checks.
cancelled	The check run was cancelled before it completed.
failure	The check run failed.
neutral	The check run completed with a neutral result. This is treated as a success for dependent checks in GitHub Actions.
skipped	The check run was skipped. This is treated as a success for dependent checks in GitHub Actions.
stale	The check run was marked stale by GitHub because it took too long.
success	The check run completed successfully.
timed_out	The check run timed out.

Retention of checks

Site administrators can control the retention policy for checks data on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance. For more information, see Configuring applications.

To merge a pull request with checks that are both required and archived, you must rerun the checks.