We’ve enhanced our platform to ensure branches appear in the branch picker dropdown even when they don’t trigger a pipeline build due to trigger settings like “Only build PRs” or “CI Skip” being enabled.

What’s Changed

Previously, when a new branch was created but didn’t trigger a build due to trigger settings (such as “Only build PRs” or commits with “[ci skip]”), the branch wouldn’t appear in the branch picker dropdown in the CircleCI UI. This made it difficult for users to manually trigger builds on these branches, as they would need to use the API instead.

Now, branches will appear in the branch picker regardless of whether they’ve triggered a pipeline, making it easier to manually trigger builds through the UI.

• No action is required to benefit from this change
• Branches will now appear in the branch picker dropdown even if they haven’t triggered a pipeline
• This applies to GitHub OAuth integrations

We’ve introduced a new “Project Setup” page in Project Settings, designed to simplify how pipelines and triggers are presented and managed. This unified experience will eventually replace the separate Pipelines and Triggers tabs.

Currently, the page supports view-only access to pipelines and triggers configured via GitHub (either via GitHub OAuth app or through the CircleCI GitHub App integration). To create, update, or delete pipelines and triggers — or to view pipelines connected to Bitbucket or GitLab — please continue using the existing Pipelines and Triggers pages.

This page is a work in progress, and we’d love your feedback as we continue to iterate. Reach out to benedetta@circleci.com with thoughts or questions.

We’ve updated the naming convention for pipelines integrated via GitHub OAuth app and Bitbucket Cloud. Previously, OAuth pipelines were automatically named {project-name} default, which in some cases created confusion. To improve clarity, we’ve simplified the naming structure by removing the “default” suffix. These pipelines are now simply named after their associated project.

This change is reflected across:

• Project Settings > Pipelines
• Project Settings > Triggers
• Trigger Pipeline modal

The public API and the ‘Pipeline’ column in the Pipelines page already used the simplified naming convention.

A change to status checks was originally scheduled for April 28, 2025. The scope of the change has been revised based on user feedback.

What is changing?

We are updating some CircleCI job statuses to better align with how we report terminal job states to VCS status checks.

Starting June 2, 2025 jobs that are currently marked as skipped will be changed to failed in CircleCI in the following situations:

• Project is abusive
• User is sanctioned
• SSH key is missing
• Server license is expired
• Parallelism limit is exceeded

Note: Status checks will not be impacted, as these jobs are already reported as failures to GitHub.

Why are we making this change?

In these cases, the failed status more accurately reflects that the job was not successful due to blocking conditions—not because of optional skips or conditional logic. This change also improves consistency across job reporting as these jobs already appear as failures in GitHub.

This is a modification of the plans announced in April for Skipped Status Will Now Return Success which will remain paused.

When will this take effect?

June 2, 2025

Three new tools are available in the CircleCI MCP Server:

We added the get_latest_pipeline_status tool to retrieve information about the status of the latest pipeline on a branch.

We also added two tools to support prompt iteration workflows:

• create_prompt_template will generate an optimized prompt for a user defined task. This is useful for crafting prompts for AI applications
• recommend_prompt_template_tests will generate test cases for a prompt, this makes it faster to try out prompts with a variety of inputs

Download the MCP Server here

Two new tools made available in the CircleCI MCP Server:

• We added the config_helper tool to assist with CircleCI configuration tasks such as providing support for validating .circleci/config.yml files, recommending fixes, and suggesting best practice improvements.
• We added the find_flaky_tests tool to identify and analyze flaky tests in CircleCI projects, supporting both project URL and local git repository context.

Download the MCP Server here

The “Trigger type” dropdown in the “Add trigger” form (Project Settings > Triggers) has been updated with the following changes:

• “GitHub App” is now the default pre-selected option for all organization types
• For organizations using CircleCI’s GitHub OAuth App integration, the dropdown now displays only the three valid trigger options: GitHub App, Custom Webhook, and Schedule

Similarly. the “Integration” dropdown in the “Add pipeline” form (Project Settings > Pipelines) has been updated with the following changes:

• “GitHub App” is now the default pre-selected option for all organization types
• For organizations using CircleCI’s GitHub OAuth App integration, the dropdown now only includes the option “GitHub App”

Update: Based on user feedback, this release has been postponed to better assess impact to VCS workflows. Detailed descriptions of changes and a new launch date will be announced soon. A new date for any breaking changes will be announced at least 4 weeks in advance.

Clarification - All VCS status checks are impacted.

What is changing?

Status checks previously sent skipped job statuses as failures, now they will be sent as successful checks. This is to align with GitHub’s definition of skipped status.

This means that “skipped” will not prevent pull request merging, even if it is a required check.

List workflow jobs v2 API previously returned jobs with blocked statuses for jobs that never ran, now they will return as a skipped status.

This applies to other jobs that result in a skipped status within CircleCi:

• Build parallelism too high.
• Higher priority serial group already in use.
• Non-runnable blocked job (e.g. an upstream failed job that required it to be successful).

Why are we doing this?

To improve the lifecycle of jobs and enable features such as finally jobs, all jobs will transition from blocked to one of the terminal states (success, failed, canceled, skipped, unauthorized).

When will it happen?

28th April 2025 A new date for any breaking changes will be announced at least 4 weeks in advance.

The environment variable CIRCLE_PULL_REQUEST is now populated for all pipelines triggered from GitHub, regardless of integration type, whenever the triggering commit is associated with a pull request.

For GitHub App pipelines specifically, the pipeline variable pipeline.event.context.github.pr_url is also populated with the same information.

Previously, the CIRCLE_PULL_REQUEST environment variable was only populated for pipelines that used CircleCI’s GitHub OAuth App integration.

Parameters in the trigger pipeline modal now automatically populate based on the pipeline selected in the dropdown menu at the top of the form.

Currently, this feature is only available for pipelines that are configured with CircleCI’s GitHub App integration. For pipelines that use CircleCI’s GitHub OAuth App integration, parameters continue to auto-populate based on the config file used in the most recent pipeline run, regardless of whether it matches the pipeline that has been selected.

What is changing?

Workflows that were previously marked as not_run—due to CI skip conditions or the “only build PRs” feature flag—will no longer create pipelines. These pipelines will not appear in the UI or API. However, the trigger event will still be recorded in the audit logs.

Why are we doing this?

Showing skipped pipelines clutters the UI and API with information that’s irrelevant to users. This behavior is also inconsistent with other VCS integrations. Removing these entries increases consistency and improves the overall user experience.

When will it happen?

14th April 2025

When using the GitHub App integration, each user needs to “authorize” the CircleCI GitHub App for their pipelines to be correctly attributed to them. Not doing so means:

• their pipelines won’t have access to contexts
• their pipelines won’t run if they have enabled the setting “Prevent unregistered user spend”
• they can’t manually trigger pipelines through the UI

Previously, the “Authorize” button was only available in the Pipeline and Trigger forms - two pages that most users don’t commonly visit.

In order to make it as easy as possible for users to know that they are not “authorized” and to take action on it, we introduced a call to action on the navigation bar.

The “Authorize” button appears only when the organization has the GitHub App installed, and the current user is not yet authorized.

IMPORTANT: This change is being released incrementally to selected organizations to ensure optimal user experience before full deployment.

We have introduced some UI changes to the pipelines page:

• The column previously named “Project” was renamed into “Pipeline”

  It displays pipeline name, pipeline number, and (only when looking at the All pipelines view) project name

• The column previously named “Trigger event” was renamed into “Checkout source”

  It continues to show the same information as before, but the avatar now shows the profile picture of the commit author, if that information is available. If it isn’t (this is currently the case for OAuth pipelines), the avatar does not show. To avoid this inconsistency, we plan on hiding the avatar also for other types of pipelines.

• A new column “Trigger event” was added

  It shows what event that triggered a pipeline (Push, Pull request, API, …). The avatar indicates who triggered the event, with a tooltip showing the username on hover.

• The headers of columns Pipeline and Trigger event each include tooltips, informing users that:

  1. it’s now possible to have multiple pipelines in the same project
  2. more GitHub trigger events options are now available

  These tooltips are visible to orgs that integrate with our GitHub OAuth app integration or GitHub App/GitLab/Bitbucket Data Center integrations. They are not visible to organizations that integrate with Bitbucket Cloud..

These changes are currently in preview, and additional improvements will be made in the coming weeks. If you have any feedback, please comment on this post on our community forum.

The tab “VCS” in Organization Settings has been renamed into “VCS Connections”, and it now includes a section dedicated to the GitHub App integration.

If the CircleCI GitHub App is not installed, it provides an overview of the functionality enabled by the App.

If the CircleCI GitHub App is installed, it shows which GitHub organization it’s connected to, and lets admin access the configuration page

The settings button redirects to the GitHub installation page. The delete button opens a modal which requires additional user input to confirm uninstallation of the GitHub App. Both actions are restricted to organization admins only.

A growing number of GitHub OAuth customers have been looking to stop building their OAuth pipelines in favour of the new GitHub App pipelines which provide a broader range of triggering options.

This is currently a manual process, which requires making changes in GitHub.

To avoid users having to refer to the docs for instructions, we added a “delete” icon next to the OAuth trigger (Project Settings > Triggers), which opens a modal containing instructions for how to disable the OAuth trigger manually.

The “Add Pipeline” form (Project Settings > Pipelines) now includes links to a Google Form that helps customers troubleshoot common issues related to GitHub App installation and permissions.

This bug has been fixed, and the note removed from the docs.

The “build forked pull request” setting in Project Settings > Advanced has been updated to clarify that it only applies to OAuth pipelines, not GitHub App pipelines.

This is an important clarification, given that organizations that use the GitHub OAuth App can now also run pipelines integrated via GitHub App to leverage new features.

The “only build pull request” setting in Project Settings > Advanced has been updated to clarify that it only applies to OAuth pipelines, not GitHub App pipelines.

This is an important clarification, given that organizations that use the GitHub OAuth App can now also run pipelines integrated via GitHub App to leverage new features.

Runner Release 3.1.0

Container Runner:

• Version 3.1.0 introduces substantial performance and reliability improvements to container runner. These updates are designed to enhance the overall efficiency and stability of operations at scale. For more background and technical details on these changes, you can visit our Runner Init repository and documentation.
• To upgrade, ensure that the Helm chart is at least version v101.1.2. The chart is pinned to the major version tag of the runner, enabling automatic upgrades on redeployment. If you wish to remain on the existing architecture (3.0.x), you can do so by setting the tag to kubernetes-3.0. This version will continue to receive only critical bug fixes and security patches. You can check the configuration details in the Helm chart repository.