🔎 Quickly list and inspect all attempts for a job in a GitHub Actions run, with options to output full links or job IDs. Handy for debugging retries.

gh-job-attempts

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

usage() {
  cat <<EOF
Usage: $(basename "$0") [options] <github-actions-run-url>

Options:
  --only-links     Only print the job links
  --only-job-ids   Only print the job IDs
  --help           Show this help message

Examples:
  $(basename "$0") https://github.com/org/repo/actions/runs/123456789/job/12345
  $(basename "$0") --only-links https://github.com/org/repo/actions/runs/123456789/job/12345
  $(basename "$0") --only-job-ids https://github.com/org/repo/actions/runs/123456789/job/12345
EOF
  exit 0
}

# --- Parse flags ---
ONLY_LINKS=false
ONLY_JOB_IDS=false

if [[ $# -eq 0 ]]; then
  usage
fi

if [[ "$1" == "--help" ]]; then
  usage
fi

if [[ $# -eq 2 ]]; then
  case "$1" in
    --only-links) ONLY_LINKS=true ;;
    --only-job-ids) ONLY_JOB_IDS=true ;;
    *) usage ;;
  esac
  INPUT_URL="$2"
elif [[ $# -eq 1 ]]; then
  INPUT_URL="$1"
else
  usage
fi

# Check for GNU grep
if command -v ggrep >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  GREP="ggrep"
elif grep --version 2>&1 | grep -q "GNU"; then
  GREP="grep"
else
  echo "❌ GNU grep (supporting -P) is required. Install 'ggrep' (e.g., via 'brew install grep') or use a system with GNU grep."
  exit 1
fi

# Parse owner, repo, and run ID from the URL
OWNER=$(echo "$INPUT_URL" | "$GREP" -oP 'github\.com/\K[^/]+')
REPO=$(echo "$INPUT_URL" | "$GREP" -oP 'github\.com/[^/]+/\K[^/]+')
RUN_ID=$(echo "$INPUT_URL" | "$GREP" -oP 'runs/\K[0-9]+')

if [[ -z "$OWNER" || -z "$REPO" || -z "$RUN_ID" ]]; then
  echo "❌ Failed to parse owner/repo/run_id from URL."
  exit 1
fi

# Get latest attempt number
LATEST_ATTEMPT=$(gh api "repos/${OWNER}/${REPO}/actions/runs/${RUN_ID}" --jq '.run_attempt')

# Function to fetch Test job info
fetch_test_job() {
  local owner=$1
  local repo=$2
  local run_id=$3
  local attempt=$4
  local path=$5

  gh api "repos/${owner}/${repo}/actions/runs/${run_id}${path}/jobs" --jq '
    .jobs[]? |
    select(.name == "Test") |
    {
      id: .id,
      url: .html_url,
      conclusion: .conclusion
    }
  ' 2>/dev/null | jq -r --arg attempt "$attempt" '
    if . == null then
      "\($attempt)\t❓ No Test Job\t-\t-"
    else
      "\($attempt)\t\(.conclusion | ascii_downcase | if test("success") then "✅ Passed" else "❌ Failed" end)\t\(.url)\t\(.id)"
    end
  '
}

# Fetch all attempts
ATTEMPTS_JSON=$(curl -s "https://github.com/${OWNER}/${REPO}/actions/runs/${RUN_ID}/new_attempts?current_attempt_number=${LATEST_ATTEMPT}&retry_blankstate=false" \
  -H "X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest" \
  -H "Accept: text/html" |
  pup 'a json{}')

if [[ -z "$ATTEMPTS_JSON" ]]; then
  echo "❌ Failed to fetch attempt data."
  exit 1
fi

ATTEMPTS=$(echo "$ATTEMPTS_JSON" | jq -r '.[].children[1].children[0].text | capture("Attempt #(?<n>\\d+)").n')

# Add latest attempt manually if missing
ATTEMPTS=$(echo -e "$LATEST_ATTEMPT\n$ATTEMPTS" | sort -nr | uniq)

# Collect all output
OUTPUT_LINES=()

for ATTEMPT in $ATTEMPTS; do
  if [[ "$ATTEMPT" == "$LATEST_ATTEMPT" ]]; then
    path=""
  else
    path="/attempts/$ATTEMPT"
  fi
  result=$(fetch_test_job "$OWNER" "$REPO" "$RUN_ID" "$ATTEMPT" "$path")
  OUTPUT_LINES+=("$result")
done

# Display
if [[ "$ONLY_LINKS" == true ]]; then
  printf "%s\n" "${OUTPUT_LINES[@]}" | awk -F'\t' '{print $3}' | grep -v '^-$'
elif [[ "$ONLY_JOB_IDS" == true ]]; then
  printf "%s\n" "${OUTPUT_LINES[@]}" | awk -F'\t' '{print $4}' | grep -v '^-$'
else
  printf "%s\n" "${OUTPUT_LINES[@]}" | awk -F'\t' '{printf "%2s  %-10s  %s\n", $1, $2, $3}'
fi

gh-job-attempts

A lightweight utility to list a specific GitHub Actions job across all attempts of a given workflow run.

✨ Features:

• Works from any GitHub Actions job URL (.../actions/runs/<run_id>/job/<job_id>)
• Dynamically detects the job name from the provided job ID (no hardcoded names)
• Shows:
  • Attempt number (latest + retries)
  • ✅ Passed / ❌ Failed status
  • Direct link to the matching job logs for each attempt
• Supports:
  • --only-links — Output just the job URLs
  • --only-job-ids — Output just the job IDs
• Proper column alignment
• Super fast: uses GitHub CLI gh and lightweight curl scraping
• Handles retries and multiple attempts cleanly

---

📦 Requirements

• gh (GitHub CLI)
• jq
• pup (HTML parser)
• GNU grep:
  • Either ggrep (macOS via Homebrew: brew install grep)
  • Or native GNU grep on Linux

Note: If GNU grep is not found, the script will exit with a helpful message.

---

🚀 Usage

# Basic usage
gh-job-attempts <github-actions-job-url>

# Output only the job URLs (for piping into other scripts)
gh-job-attempts --only-links <github-actions-job-url>

# Output only the job IDs
gh-job-attempts --only-job-ids <github-actions-job-url>

Example:

gh-job-attempts "https://github.com/ericboehs/sprintosaurus-sinatra/actions/runs/14669964121/job/41178086659"

# Output:
 9  ✅ Passed  https://github.com/.../job/41184112808
 8  ❌ Failed  https://github.com/.../job/41178681373
 7  ✅ Passed  https://github.com/.../job/41178086659
 6  ✅ Passed  https://github.com/.../job/41177495183
 ...

---

⚡ Installation Tip

Put the script into your ~/bin/ or any folder in your $PATH, and make it executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/gh-job-attempts

Then run it anywhere!

---

⚠️ Caveats

• Private GitHub API:
  This script scrapes from GitHub’s internal /new_attempts endpoint, which is not officially supported and could change or break without notice.

---

License

MIT