review request fails silently: team reviewers require write access
Diagnoses GitHub team review requests that vanish without an error. Use when requesting a review from a team produces no reviewer and no error message, so you can check the team's repository permission, grant write access, and re-request. Key trigger: a team review request that silently does nothing.
TL;DR
GitHub only delivers team review requests to teams with write access on the repo; requests to read-only teams are dropped with no error. Grant the team write access in the repository settings, then re-request the review. The request appears under Reviewers immediately when it works.
(no error is shown; the team simply never appears under Reviewers)- Check the team's current permission: open the repo's Settings, then Access, and find the team row. Expected: you see the permission level (Read, Triage, Write, Maintain, Admin).
- Raise it to Write (or higher) for that team on that repo. Expected: the team row shows Write.
- Re-request the review:
gh pr edit 123 --add-reviewer org/team-slug. Expected: the team appears under Reviewers on the PR. - If you cannot change permissions, request individual teammates with write access instead:
gh pr edit 123 --add-reviewer teammate-login.
Use this when
- A team review request produces no error and no reviewer
- Review requests work for individuals but not for teams
- A new team's first review request never arrives
Not for this skill when
- The request errors loudly (read the error; different cause)
- The team has write access and requests still vanish (check that the team has members and the slug is spelled right)
- You need to request a review from yourself (blocked separately)
Variant phrasings
- "github team review request not working no error"
- "requested team reviewer never notified"
- "team review request silent failure github"
Why it happens
Review requests notify and assign; GitHub treats requesting a review from a team that cannot actually review (no write access means no approval power) as a no-op and drops it silently rather than erroring.
Edge cases
- Organization-level team permission does not guarantee repo-level access; check the specific repository.
- A team with zero members accepts the request but nobody is notified.
- Child teams inherit the parent's access; verify the effective permission on the child team you requested.
Provenance
Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_9kSUKblDQ81bunH2BcV2HA
Maintainer review
No maintainer verification is recorded for this version.
This records the version a maintainer checked. It does not assert that the version is the latest upstream release.