FAQ: A Drafted Retry Block Is Not a Flake Policy
A red job came back green after a single retry. Someone pasted a model draft and called the flake gone. I do not buy that story without a real job log. The YAML looked tidy, and the chat looked confident. The pipeline contract was still missing from the diff. Have you merged a draft like that in the last month? Why this FAQ exists I review GitLab CI drafts more often than application code. People…
A retry block in GitLab CI is not a replacement for addressing flaky jobs. When someone adds a retry key, it only queues another attempt to run the job, not guaranteeing stability. The myth claims that the retry key makes the job safe, but evidence shows it only spends a failure budget. The network blip, cold cache warming, or other minor issues could cause a passing second attempt, leaving the underlying bug unchanged. GitLab documents retry as rerun control, not a diagnosis.
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