Wildcard patterns in repository rulesets not matching GitHub Actions status checks

[mayank-khullar]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Other

Discussion Details

I'm trying to use wildcard patterns (e.g., preview*) in repository rulesets to match multiple GitHub Actions status checks.
However, the wildcard pattern is not matching any checks in the PR checks section

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a ruleset with required status check using wildcard pattern:
   - Context: preview*
2. Create a PR that triggers a GitHub Actions workflow with multiple jobs:
   - Job IDs: preview_admin, preview_dev, preview_staging, preview_prod
   - These jobs report status in format: {job_id} / {Job Name}
   - Example: preview_admin / Infra Preview admin
3. Observe the behavior:
   - Ruleset shows preview* as "Expected — Waiting for status to be reported"
   - Pattern never matches the running checks
   - PR remains blocked

Expected Behavior

The wildcard pattern preview* should match all status checks with job IDs starting with "preview":

• preview_admin / Infra Preview admin ✓
• preview_dev / Infra Preview dev ✓
• preview_staging / Infra Preview staging ✓
• preview_prod / Infra Preview prod ✓

[maheerCodes]

This behavior is expected with wildcard patterns in repository rulesets — currently, ruleset required status checks do not currently support partial wildcard matching (e.g., preview*).

Instead, GitHub evaluates status checks using exact context names reported by the checks API, such as:

• preview_admin / Infra Preview admin
• preview_dev / Infra Preview dev

Because of this, the wildcard preview* will not match any of the individual job contexts, which is why the ruleset stays in "Waiting for status to be reported".

A possible workaround is to explicitly list each required check in the ruleset, for example:

• preview_admin
• preview_dev
• preview_staging
• preview_prod

Relevant GitHub documentation:
https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/configuring-branches-and-merges-in-your-repository/managing-rulesets/about-rulesets

If wildcard support is important for your workflow, it may be worth raising this as a feature request, as many CI-heavy teams run into this limitation.

If this helped clarify the issue, please consider marking this as the accepted answer so others can find it easily.