An update, thanks to a student willing to help me debug:

If I give the student (an outside collaborator) read only access to the starter project (which was made from the template), and then have them accept the invite to that assignment, it works properly. Most importantly (?) the bot invited him to the repo before repo.create was called.

Shouldn't this be unnecessary? I see no where in the documentation that this is required.

Additional info for people reading this: after talking with CoPilot in support, it turns out that if the starter project is internal (which it is, definitely don't want it to be public since some homeworks chain off one another), the students as outside collaborators have no visibility into that project, and the fork fails, EVEN THOUGH THE BOT is forking the code. So you have to add them as read only members of the starter project for the fork to work. Which seems really dumb to me. Yes, I'm submitting a ticket, because now there are 2 invites each assignment (once for the starter project, one for their fork), which is just bad. (And they can't be added to a team, since they are not org members)

Hi @hococoder! 👋

That log sequence (repo.create followed almost immediately by repo.destroy) usually suggests a rollback mechanism. It seems GitHub Classroom successfully creates the repository, but then encounters an error during the configuration phase (like adding the student as a collaborator or pushing the starter code), so it deletes the repository to avoid leaving it in a broken state.

Here are the most common causes for this behavior:

1. Third-party Application Restrictions (Most Likely)
If your Organization has "Third-party application access policy" enabled, you might need to explicitly grant access to GitHub Classroom again.

• Go to your Organization page -> Settings.
• Look for Third-party access -> OAuth application policy.
• Check if GitHub Classroom has a green checkmark or if it needs "Grant access".

2. Template Repository Visibility
If your starter code repository is Private, ensure that the GitHub Classroom app has permission to read it. Sometimes, simply making the template repository "Public" (temporarily) helps diagnose if this is a permission issue.

3. Re-authorize the App
Sometimes the token simply expires or gets out of sync.

• Go to the classroom settings URL (usually classroom.github.com).
• Try to "Re-sync" your roster or disconnect and reconnect the organization to refresh the OAuth token.