BREAKING: GitHub MINOR ⚠️ Pull Request Incident — Workarounds Inside

GitHub experiencing partial disruption with Pull Requests. Immediate actions and alternatives for indie hackers.

BREAKING: GitHub Pull Request Incident — What You Need to Know

Status: Monitoring | Severity: MINOR | Impact: Partial Disruption

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What's Down Right Now

GitHub is experiencing an incident affecting Pull Request functionality. This impacts:

Creating new PRs — may fail or experience delays

Reviewing PRs — comment/approval workflows affected

Merging PRs — attempted merges may timeout

PR status checks — CI/CD integrations may show stale status

Who's affected: Any workflow dependent on PR operations. Git pushes and code viewing remain unaffected.

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Immediate Workarounds (Do This Now)

1. Pause PR Operations

If your PR isn't critical, wait 15-30 minutes before retrying. Don't spam the API.

2. Push Code Directly (Temporary Only)

For urgent fixes on non-collaborative branches: ```bash git push origin your-branch ``` You can create the PR later when service recovers.

3. Use GitHub CLI for PR Operations

GitHub CLI sometimes routes around the web UI bottleneck: ```bash gh pr create --title "Your PR" --body "Details" --base main gh pr view <PR_NUMBER> ```

4. Offline Code Review

Use git diff origin/main > review.patch locally

Review code in your editor or IDE

Share patch file with team via Slack/Discord

Apply and test changes locally before merging

5. Communicate Delays

Notify your team immediately in Slack/Discord. Don't let deployments block on PR merges right now.

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How to Check If Your Project Is Affected

1. Direct Test: Attempt to create a test PR on a throwaway branch 2. Check Status Page: https://www.githubstatus.com — look for "Pull Requests" component 3. Monitor Your CI: If status checks aren't updating, incident is active 4. Check GitHub API: curl https://api.github.com/repos/YOUR_ORG/YOUR_REPO/pulls — slow/timeout = affected

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Alternative Tools to Consider (If Incident Persists)

Short-term Alternatives

Gitea (self-hosted) — full Git + PR support

Gitlab.com — native PR equivalent (Merge Requests) with 10GB free tier

Forgejo (self-hosted fork of Gitea) — lightweight, reliable

For Code Review Only

Gerrit — designed for offline code review

Local git tools — git format-patch + email workflow

Reality check: Don't migrate platforms over a 1-2 hour incident. These are backup options only.

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How to Monitor Recovery

Real-time Monitoring: 1. GitHub Status Page → https://www.githubstatus.com (updates every 5 mins) 2. Twitter/X → Follow @githubstatus for official announcements 3. GitHub Incident Page → You'll see incident link on login page

Programmatic Check: ```bash

Monitor status API (run every 2 minutes)

curl -s https://www.githubstatus.com/api/v2/status.json | jq '.status.indicator'

Output: 'none' = healthy, 'minor'/'major' = incident active

```

Team Notification: Set up alert in your monitoring tool or create a simple script: ```bash #!/bin/bash while true; do status=$(curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/YOUR_ORG/YOUR_REPO/pulls | head -c 5) [ -z "$status" ] && echo "ALERT: GitHub PR still down" || echo "✓ GitHub recovered" sleep 300 done ```

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Bottom Line

This is a partial disruption — not a total outage. Stay calm, use workarounds, and avoid retry loops. GitHub's track record is strong; expect recovery within 1-4 hours.

Don't deploy over this incident. Update your team and resume normal workflows once status shows "Operational."

Keep shipping. 🚀