GitHub has Issues as repo downloads hit 50% error rate

GitHub has been experiencing significant issues with repository content downloads, with a 50 percent error rate. The problems began on Monday, with GitHub's status page reporting impacted performance for some of its services. This quickly escalated to degraded performance across numerous services, including Issues, which was facing its own problems.

GitHub has acknowledged the issues and promised an update, but this incident is part of a series of recent disruptions. Earlier in August, GitHub's Actions automation platform and Pages hosting service also experienced issues. In its May 2026 availability report, GitHub admitted that AI-assisted coding and agentic workflows were adding to the strain.

Microsoft, GitHub's parent company, previously stated that AI was writing up to 30 percent of the code in some of its repositories, though human review is required. In an effort to improve reliability, GitHub's software engineering vice president, Jakub Oleksy, announced that structural changes were being implemented to eliminate failure modes.

While GitHub has assured developers that they are committed to making the service reliable, the repeated outages demonstrate that there is still a long way to go. Developers have expressed their frustration on social media, with some calling GitHub "falling apart." The cause of the current issues remains unknown, but these ongoing disruptions have left developers counting idle hours and considering alternatives.