What causes "Bitbucket request failed: {status}" in gitbutlerapp/gitbutler?

Inspect the status in the message: retry with backoff on 429/5xx, refresh credentials on 401

Bitbucket request failed

Error message

Bitbucket request failed: {status}

What it means

In list_checks_for_ref, after attempting to classify repository-access failures, any remaining non-success HTTP status for the commit-status/build-status endpoint is turned into this generic error carrying the status. It means the build-status listing could not be retrieved for a reason other than the recognized access problems.

Solutions

Inspect the status in the message: retry with backoff on 429/5xx, refresh credentials on 401
Check the token's repository read scope
Cache/poll less frequently to avoid Bitbucket rate limits
Confirm the workspace/repo-slug and commit SHA are correct

Example fix

// before
let checks = client.list_checks_for_ref(workspace, repo_slug, sha).await?;
// after
let checks = retry_backoff(3, || client.list_checks_for_ref(workspace, repo_slug, sha)).await?;

Defensive patterns

Strategy: retry

Try / catch

match result {
    Err(e) if e.to_string().contains("429") || e.to_string().contains("50") => { backoff_retry(3, op)?; }
    other => other?,
}

Prevention

Poll CI status at a modest interval to avoid rate limits
Refresh tokens proactively
Cache status responses briefly
Distinguish access errors from transient ones by inspecting the status in the message

When it happens

Trigger: Calling list_checks_for_ref when the statuses endpoint returns 401 (expired token), 429 (rate limit), 5xx (Bitbucket outage), or an access error shape that classify_repository_access_error does not recognize.

Common situations: Rate limiting while polling CI status in a loop; transient Bitbucket Cloud 5xx; token revoked mid-session; commit SHA with no statuses plus a permission quirk.

Understand the failure class

Background: "API error: {status}" and "HTTP 401/403/404/429/5xx" errors: non-2xx HTTP responses explained — this error's family across 27 libraries.

Related errors

AI-assisted analysis of gitbutlerapp/gitbutler@58e5313667 (2026-09-18). Data as JSON: /api/errors/5631e9c116ce3f45. Report an issue: GitHub.

Appendix: source

Thrown at crates/but-bitbucket/src/client.rs:584

                return Err(self
                    .classify_repository_access_error(repository_status, workspace, repo_slug)
                    .await);
            }
            return Err(anyhow::Error::new(HttpStatusError {
                status: repository_status,
            })
            .context("Failed to verify Bitbucket repository access"));
        }
        if matches!(
            status,
            reqwest::StatusCode::UNAUTHORIZED | reqwest::StatusCode::FORBIDDEN
        ) {
            return Err(self
                .classify_repository_access_error(status, workspace, repo_slug)
                .await);
        }
        if !status.is_success() {
            bail!("Bitbucket request failed: {status}");
        }

        let page: Paginated<BitbucketApiBuildStatus> = response.json().await?;
        let mut statuses = page.values;
        if let Some(next) = page.next {
            statuses.extend(self.get_paginated(next).await?);
        }
        Ok(Some(
            statuses
                .into_iter()
                .map(BitbucketBuildStatus::from_api)
                .collect(),
        ))
    }

    async fn repository_status(
        &self,
        workspace: &str,

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