Renovate occasionally fails to add labels to PRs

[vivodi]

How are you running Renovate?

A Mend.io-hosted app

Which platform you running Renovate on?

GitHub.com

Which version of Renovate are you using?

No response

Please tell us more about your question or problem

Maybe with a probability of around one in a thousand, Renovate failed to add labels to this PR: Flexget/Flexget#4916

Our configuration is set up so that Renovate adds the dependencies label to every PR, and this has worked consistently for months. This is the only instance where the label was not applied.

I’m not a repository maintainer, so I don’t have access to the logs.

Logs (if relevant)

Logs

Replace this text with your logs, between the starting and ending triple backticks

[bakk]

I have the same problem, but it's more like one in twenty PR is missing the label. I found a 422 error from the github api in the log:

WARN: Error while adding labels. Skipping (branch="renovate/all-npm-patch")
{
  "err": {
    "hostType": "github",
    "err": {
      "name": "HTTPError",
      "code": "ERR_NON_2XX_3XX_RESPONSE",
      "timings": {
        "start": 1776128335531,
        "socket": 1776128335532,
        "lookup": 1776128335532,
        "connect": 1776128335532,
        "secureConnect": 1776128335532,
        "upload": 1776128335532,
        "response": 1776128335722,
        "end": 1776128335723,
        "phases": {
          "wait": 1,
          "dns": 1,
          "tcp": 2,
          "tls": 6,
          "request": 0,
          "firstByte": 190,
          "download": 1,
          "total": 192
        }
      },
      "options": {
        "headers": {
          "user-agent": "Renovate/43.110.2 (https://github.com/renovatebot/renovate)",
          "accept": "application/json, application/vnd.github.v3+json",
          "authorization": "***********",
          "content-type": "application/json",
          "content-length": "16",
          "accept-encoding": "gzip, deflate, br, zstd"
        },
        "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/*********/**********/issues/832/labels",
        "hostType": "github",
        "username": "",
        "password": "",
        "method": "POST",
        "http2": false
      },
      "message": "Request failed with status code 422 (Unprocessable Entity): POST https://api.github.com/repos/*********/**********/issues/832/labels",
      "stack": "HTTPError: Request failed with status code 422 (Unprocessable Entity): POST https://api.github.com/repos/*********/**********/issues/832/labels\n    at Request.<anonymous> (file:///usr/local/renovate/node_modules/.pnpm/got@14.6.6/node_modules/got/dist/source/as-promise/index.js:98:42)\n    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:104:5)",
      "response": {
        "statusCode": 422,
        "statusMessage": "Unprocessable Entity",
        "body": {
          "message": "Validation Failed",
          "errors": [
            {
              "resource": "Label",
              "code": "unprocessable",
              "field": "data",
              "message": "Could not resolve to a node with the global id of 'PR_kwDOKWbWyc*****."
            }
          ],
          "documentation_url": "https://docs.github.com/rest/issues/labels#add-labels-to-an-issue",
          "status": "422"
        },
        "headers": {
          "date": "Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:58:55 GMT",
          "content-type": "application/json; charset=utf-8",
          "content-length": "289",
          "x-github-media-type": "github.v3",
          "x-accepted-github-permissions": "issues=write; pull_requests=write",
          "x-github-api-version-selected": "2022-11-28",
          "access-control-expose-headers": "ETag, Link, Location, Retry-After, X-GitHub-OTP, X-RateLimit-Limit, X-RateLimit-Remaining, X-RateLimit-Used, X-RateLimit-Resource, X-RateLimit-Reset, X-OAuth-Scopes, X-Accepted-OAuth-Scopes, X-Poll-Interval, X-GitHub-Media-Type, X-GitHub-SSO, X-GitHub-Request-Id, Deprecation, Sunset",
          "access-control-allow-origin": "*",
          "strict-transport-security": "max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains; preload",
          "x-frame-options": "deny",
          "x-content-type-options": "nosniff",
          "x-xss-protection": "0",
          "referrer-policy": "origin-when-cross-origin, strict-origin-when-cross-origin",
          "content-security-policy": "default-src 'none'",
          "vary": "Accept-Encoding, Accept, X-Requested-With",
          "x-github-request-id": "B0E8:241C8F:3A9679:EC25D9:69DD914F",
          "server": "github.com",
          "x-ratelimit-limit": "15000",
          "x-ratelimit-remaining": "14896",
          "x-ratelimit-reset": "1776128882",
          "x-ratelimit-used": "104",
          "x-ratelimit-resource": "core"
        },
        "httpVersion": "1.1",
        "retryCount": 0
      }
    },
    "message": "external-host-error",
    "stack": "Error: external-host-error\n    at handleGotError (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/util/http/github.ts:196:12)\n    at GithubHttp.handleError (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/util/http/github.ts:382:11)\n    at GithubHttp.request (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/util/http/http.ts:271:12)\n    at processTicksAndRejections (node:internal/process/task_queues:104:5)\n    at GithubHttp.requestJsonUnsafe (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/util/http/github.ts:396:20)\n    at GithubHttp.requestJson (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/util/http/http.ts:384:17)\n    at addLabels (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/modules/platform/github/index.ts:1593:7)\n    at Proxy.createPr (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/modules/platform/github/index.ts:1875:3)\n    at ensurePr (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/workers/repository/update/pr/index.ts:531:14)\n    at processBranch (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/workers/repository/update/branch/index.ts:945:28)\n    at instrument.attributes (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/workers/repository/process/write.ts:188:21)\n    at writeUpdates (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/workers/repository/process/write.ts:161:17)\n    at update (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/workers/repository/process/extract-update.ts:253:11)\n    at renovateRepository (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/workers/repository/index.ts:143:19)\n    at instrument.attributes (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/workers/global/index.ts:219:11)\n    at start (file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/workers/global/index.ts:204:7)\n    at file:///usr/local/renovate/lib/renovate.ts:26:22"
  },
  "issueNo": 832,
  "labels": [
    "dependencies"
  ]
}