Bug: Knope Bot stopped reacting to webhooks for one repo (no PR check, no release PR refresh)

[wspringer]

Summary

Knope Bot has gone silent on a single repo of mine. It is no longer running the "Require changes to be documented" check on PRs, and no longer updating the existing release PR when new changesets land on main. The GitHub App is still installed with full permissions, and the bot is still active in other repos under the same account.

Repo

wspringer/indesign-mcp (private)

Timeline

Date	Event
2026-04-13	PR #165 merged — bot's "Require changes to be documented" check ran ✅
2026-04-14	PR #168 merged — bot's check ran ✅
2026-04-17 06:19 UTC	Last bot activity: knope-bot commit 4bc28486 on knope/release updating the release PR #164
2026-04-27 07:48 UTC	PR #175 merged with a new changeset — bot's check did not run, release PR was not updated
2026-04-27 08:14 UTC	Pushed an empty commit to main to force a fresh push webhook delivery — no bot reaction

PR #175's status checks include only the GitHub Actions check; the Require changes to be documented check that ran on #165 and #168 is missing entirely.

What I've verified

• App is installed at https://github.com/wspringer/indesign-mcp/settings/installations with permissions: read metadata; read & write checks/code/issues/PRs.
• wspringer/indesign-mcp is in the selected-repos list.
• knope.toml has [bot.releases] enabled = true and is unchanged from when the bot was working.
• The new changeset is well-formed — knope prepare-release --dry-run (CLI 0.21.7) parses all four changesets correctly and would bump 1.0.12 → 1.0.13 with the expected changelog.
• Existing release PR chore(deps): update rust crate semver to 1.0.7 #164 has mergeable: MERGEABLE and no merge conflict on knope/release against main.
• Other repos in my account (where Knope Bot is also installed) are not affected — this is repo-specific, not account-wide.

Expected

After the empty-commit push at 08:14 UTC, the bot should have either re-run its PR check on a subsequent PR or pushed a refresh commit to knope/release updating PR #164 to include the new changeset entry.

Actual

No bot activity on this repo since 2026-04-17. No check runs on PR #175, no commits on knope/release.

What I'd like

A nudge from your side to re-handshake the installation for this repo, or guidance on how to do it from my side beyond toggling the repo selection (which I haven't tried yet — happy to if useful).

Happy to provide any installation IDs, delivery IDs, or other diagnostics if you can tell me where to find them.

[wspringer]

Update: I tried reinstalling the bot for this repo (uninstall + reinstall via the same Marketplace flow). After reinstall I pushed two more empty commits to main (e1903e5 at 08:14 UTC, bb5a0bf at 08:21 UTC). Still no bot activity:

• No check runs from knope-bot on either commit.
• No new commits pushed by knope-bot[bot] to knope/release.
• The e830e51 commit on knope/release you may see in the PR is a manual Merge branch 'main' into knope/release I clicked through GitHub's UI — it's not from the bot.

So a clean reinstall does not recover the installation. The bot is still receiving no webhook deliveries (or processing them but emitting nothing).

I'll fall back to running knope prepare-release locally and force-pushing knope/release so we can ship our current release. Happy to leave the repo in this stuck state for a while if it helps you investigate — let me know what you need.

[wspringer]

One more datapoint, ruling out config drift:

• knope.toml is byte-identical to the version present on the last successful bot run (commit 4bc28486, 2026-04-17 06:19 UTC). No human or bot has touched it since.
• Locally upgraded to knope 0.22.4 and ran knope prepare-release --dry-run --verbose: parses all four changesets (including the new fix-helloack-reconnect.md) and would correctly produce 1.0.13 with the expected CHANGELOG entry.
• I do see two deprecation warnings on the latest CLI:
  • ignore_conventional_commits on the PrepareRelease step (suggests moving to [changes])
  • The implicit [packages.sidekick] syntax for a single package
• Both are deprecation-level only; the CLI still produces correct output.
• Side note: knope --upgrade deletes my [bot.releases] enabled = true section entirely without replacing it, which I believe is a separate bug in the upgrade tool (every active bot user I can find still has [bot.releases], including this repo's siblings under the same account).

So the changeset format and the config are fine. The bot is just not receiving or not acting on webhooks for this repo.

I'll fall back to running knope locally and force-pushing knope/release to unblock our release. If you'd like me to leave the repo in this stuck state for further investigation instead, please say so within the next hour or two.

[dbanty]

Thanks for the detailed report! It looks like GitHub was rate limiting the bot for this installation only for some reason. It does look like there's a spike in number of events but not an outrageous one, so not sure why it happened. I've got some open items to optimize a few API calls, guess it's time to prioritize them!

Poking around the current state, it doesn't look like anything is still broken, but I'll do a more thorough investigation tonight. Let me know if you see anything else fishy!

[dotansimha]

I'm also experiencing a similar issues rencetly. Is there a way to debug the runs of the bot?

[dotansimha]

@dbanty any idea?

I do see that Knope comments and reports a status on PRs, but it does not open a release PR when changesets are clearly there and pending for a release.
(repo: https://github.com/graphql-hive/router)

[dbanty]

@dotansimha I think I fixed the one your repo was tripping. Got a few tangled issues here with GitHub's API 😕

[dotansimha]

Thanks @dbanty , it does work now! :)