GitHub Is Down Again — And This Time, Your AI Coding Agent Can't Work Either
On February 9, 2026, GitHub experienced yet another significant outage, leaving developers worldwide unable to push code, run CI/CD pipelines, or review pull requests. But this time, the impact was far more severe than in years past. In 2026, AI coding agents like Claude Code, OpenAI Codex CLI, and Cursor have become integral parts of developer workflows — and every single one of them depends on GitHub to function properly.
When GitHub goes down today, it doesn't just mean you can't push code. It means your AI assistant can't push code either. Your automated agents can't open pull requests. Your CI/CD pipelines grind to a halt. And the entire AI-augmented development workflow you've spent months perfecting? It collapses like a house of cards.
Here's what happened, what it means for the future of AI-powered development, and what you can do to protect your workflow.
What Happened: The February 9, 2026 GitHub Outage
According to GitHub's official status page, the incident began at approximately 15:54 UTC on February 9, 2026. GitHub initially reported "impacted performance for some GitHub services," but the situation quickly escalated.
Here's the timeline based on GitHub's own status updates:
| Time (UTC) | Status | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 15:54 | Investigating | Reports of impacted performance for some GitHub services |
| 16:12 | Update | Notification delivery delays around 50 minutes; working on mitigation |
| 16:51 | Update | Average delivery latency nearing 1 hour 20 minutes; first signs of recovery |
| 17:25 | Recovering | Notifications delivered with approximately 1-hour delay |
| 17:57 | Recovering | Delay reduced to approximately 30 minutes |
| 18:33 | Recovering | Delay reduced to approximately 15 minutes; working through backlog |
While GitHub's status page focused on "notification delivery delays," the Hacker News discussion — which racked up 289 points and 315 comments — painted a much bleaker picture. Developers reported the web UI being "mostly unusable," inability to create or review pull requests, and GitHub Actions failing across the board.
The Azure Migration Factor
This outage didn't happen in a vacuum. According to developers in the Hacker News thread, GitHub has been in the process of migrating its core platform from its legacy data center to Microsoft Azure. Actions and Copilot were migrated in 2024. Pages and Packages completed migration in 2025. But the core platform and databases only began migration in October 2025 — and as of February 2026, traffic is split between the legacy data center and Azure.
As one commenter put it: "That's probably partly why things have got increasingly flaky — until they finish there'll be constant background cognitive load and surface area for bugs from the fact everything (especially the data) is half-migrated."
Another noted that recent incidents have been "attributed specifically to Azure, and Azure itself has had a lot of downtime recently that lasts for many hours." For an infrastructure platform serving over 100 million developers, this pattern is deeply concerning.
Why This Outage Hits Different in 2026: The AI Coding Agent Problem
Here's the thing that makes GitHub outages in 2026 fundamentally different from outages in, say, 2022: AI coding agents have become central to professional development workflows.
Tools like Claude Code, OpenAI's Codex CLI, and Cursor don't just help you write code — they manage entire development workflows. They create branches, commit changes, open pull requests, run tests through CI, and iterate based on review feedback. And almost all of this flows through GitHub.
When GitHub goes down, these AI agents don't gracefully degrade. They hit walls. Here's what breaks:
| AI Agent Capability | GitHub Dependency | Impact When Down |
|---|---|---|
| Push commits | Git remote (github.com) | Code stays local only; no collaboration |
| Open pull requests | GitHub API | Agent workflow blocked entirely |
| Run CI/CD tests | GitHub Actions | No test feedback loop; agent can't validate work |
| Read issue context | GitHub Issues API | Agent loses task context and requirements |
| Fetch dependencies | GitHub-hosted packages | Builds fail; Go modules, npm packages unavailable |
| Agent team coordination | GitHub PRs and reviews | Multi-agent workflows collapse |
If you've set up AI agent teams where multiple agents work on different parts of a codebase simultaneously, a GitHub outage doesn't just slow them down — it stops them cold. The entire feedback loop that makes agentic coding work (write code → push → test → iterate) requires a functioning remote Git platform.
The Developer Community Reacts
The Hacker News discussion revealed deep frustration, but also some important nuances about how deeply GitHub has embedded itself into modern development infrastructure.
One developer captured the sentiment perfectly: "I'm sympathetic to ops issues, and particularly sympathetic to ops issues that are caused by brain-dead corporate mandates, but you don't get to be an infrastructure company and have this uptime record."
Another pointed out the painful irony: "It's extra galling that they advertise all the new buzzword laden AI pipeline features while the regular website and actions fail constantly. The leadership is just clearly failing to properly steer the ship here."
The "just use your local repo" argument came up predictably — and was quickly shut down. As one developer put it: "I need my code to pass CI, and get reviewed, so I can move on, otherwise the PRs just keep piling. You might as well say the lights could go out, you can do paperwork."
The dependency runs even deeper than most realize. Teams have built their entire compliance processes around GitHub. SOC2 audits reference GitHub PR reviews. Build systems pull dependencies from GitHub-hosted repositories. Go builds fail if a dependency module from GitHub is unavailable. The platform has become infrastructure in every sense of the word.
GitHub's Uptime Problem Is Getting Worse, Not Better
This isn't an isolated incident. GitHub has experienced multiple notable outages in recent months, and the pattern correlates with the ongoing Azure migration. Developers have noticed that GitHub Copilot — which completed its Azure migration in 2024 — has had the worst incident record among GitHub services.
For context, here's what the competitive landscape looks like for Git hosting reliability:
| Platform | SLA Target | Notable 2025-2026 Issues |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub | 99.9% | Multiple multi-hour outages during Azure migration |
| GitLab | 99.95% | Generally stable; occasional CI runner issues |
| Bitbucket | 99.9% | Fewer headline incidents; smaller user base |
One Hacker News commenter issued a stark warning: "If you'd have asked me a few years ago if anything could be an existential threat to GitHub's dominance in the tech community I'd have quickly said no. If they don't get their ops house in order, this will go down as an all-time own goal in our industry."
What You Can Do: Building Resilience Into AI Coding Workflows
You can't control GitHub's uptime, but you can reduce the blast radius when it goes down. Here are practical strategies for teams relying on AI coding agents:
1. Configure Git Remotes as Fallbacks
Set up a secondary remote on GitLab or Bitbucket. When GitHub is down, your AI agents can push to the backup remote. Most AI coding tools like Claude Code and Codex CLI work with any Git remote — they don't require GitHub specifically for push operations.
2. Cache Dependencies Locally
Use tools like Artifactory, Nexus, or even Go's module proxy to cache your dependencies. When GitHub-hosted packages are unavailable, your builds should still succeed from cache. Go developers already benefit from Google's module cache, which stores any properly tagged OSS module indefinitely.
3. Decouple CI from GitHub Actions
If you're running critical CI pipelines, consider a self-hosted runner or alternative CI service (CircleCI, Jenkins, Buildkite). This way, even if GitHub's web UI and API are down, your tests can still run against local code.
4. Design Agent Workflows for Offline Resilience
Configure your AI agents to continue working locally when GitHub is unreachable. The agent can still write code, run local tests, and queue commits for later push. The key is making sure the workflow doesn't hard-fail on the first GitHub API timeout.
5. Monitor GitHub Status Proactively
Subscribe to githubstatus.com alerts. When you get the first "investigating" notification, switch your AI agents to local-only mode before they start failing mid-task.
The Bigger Picture: Single Points of Failure in AI Development
This outage highlights a broader issue in the AI coding ecosystem. We've built an entire generation of developer tools — AI agents, code review bots, automated deployment pipelines — on top of a single platform. GitHub is the substrate on which modern AI-augmented development runs.
That's a single point of failure for an industry that preaches distributed systems and redundancy.
The irony isn't lost on the developer community. Git was literally designed to be decentralized. Linus Torvalds built it so that no single server failure could stop Linux kernel development. Yet here we are, with the entire AI coding ecosystem grinding to a halt because one company's Azure migration is having a rough day.
At Serenities AI, we track these developments closely because they directly impact how developers use AI coding tools day to day. Understanding these dependencies — and planning around them — is becoming a critical skill for any team that relies on AI-augmented development workflows.
What Comes Next
GitHub will recover from this outage, as it always does. The Azure migration will eventually complete. But the fundamental tension remains: the more powerful our AI coding agents become, the more dependent they are on the platforms they interact with.
Smart teams are already building redundancy into their workflows. They're setting up backup remotes, caching dependencies, and designing agent configurations that degrade gracefully when a critical service is unavailable. Because in 2026, a GitHub outage doesn't just mean you lose a few hours of productivity. It means your entire AI-powered development team — human and artificial — goes dark.
The question isn't whether GitHub will go down again. It's whether you'll be ready when it does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does a GitHub outage affect AI coding tools?
AI coding agents like Claude Code, Codex CLI, and Cursor rely on GitHub for pushing commits, opening pull requests, running CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions, and fetching issue context. When GitHub is down, these agents lose the ability to complete their end-to-end workflows, even though they can still generate code locally.
Can I still use AI coding agents when GitHub is down?
Yes, but with limitations. AI agents can still write and edit code locally, run local tests, and make local commits. However, they cannot push to remote repositories, open PRs, trigger CI pipelines, or collaborate with other agents through GitHub's platform. Setting up a backup Git remote on GitLab or Bitbucket can help maintain partial functionality.
How often does GitHub go down?
GitHub has experienced multiple significant outages during 2025 and early 2026, with many attributed to the ongoing migration from GitHub's legacy data center to Microsoft Azure. The core platform migration began in October 2025 and is still in progress as of February 2026, which has contributed to increased instability.
Is GitHub migrating to Azure causing the outages?
Community analysis strongly suggests a correlation. GitHub's migration to Azure has been happening in phases — Actions and Copilot migrated in 2024, Pages and Packages in 2025, and the core platform starting in late 2025. The split-traffic architecture during migration creates additional complexity and surface area for bugs, and multiple recent incidents have been directly attributed to Azure issues.
What are the best alternatives to GitHub for AI coding workflows?
GitLab and Bitbucket are the main alternatives for Git hosting. However, rather than fully migrating, most teams benefit from a multi-remote strategy: keep GitHub as the primary platform but configure a secondary remote as a failover. This preserves your existing GitHub integrations while providing resilience during outages.