Bitbucket Cloud · Pipelines · Checked October 29, 2026

Bitbucket Pipelines did not run after a push

There is no error message: the push went through, and no pipeline appeared. Pipelines starts a build only when the pushed branch has a bitbucket-pipelines.yml with a pipeline that matches it, and the push stays within a few limits. These are the six reasons Atlassian lists (The build was not triggered for a particular commit), then how to start the build by hand.

1. The branch has no bitbucket-pipelines.yml

Pipelines reads the file from the branch you pushed, not from the main branch. A branch made before the file was added does not have it. On Bitbucket, open Source, pick that branch, and check that bitbucket-pipelines.yml is there, at the top of the repository, spelled exactly so.

2. No pipeline matches the branch

From Atlassian's glob patterns and start conditions pages:

• feature/* does not match feature/team/login: * stops at a slash. Use feature/**.
• A pattern that starts with a star needs quotes: '*', '**', '*/feature'.
• An exact branch name wins over a pattern: with feature/* and feature/bb-123, a push to feature/bb-123 runs only the second.
• default runs for branches that match no other definition, and not for tags. A tag needs a tags: section.
• pull-requests: runs when a pull request is created, matched on its source branch, and never for a pull request from a fork.

pipelines:
  default:
    - step:
        script:
          - npm test
  branches:
    'feature/**':
      - step:
          script:
            - npm test
  tags:
    'v*':
      - step:
          script:
            - npm run release

3. The push had more than five branches or tags

Atlassian's Limitations of Bitbucket Pipelines says that a push involving more than five branches, tags or bookmarks runs no pipeline at all, so that one push does not use up the build minutes. git push --all, git push --tags or git push --mirror do that easily. Push five or fewer at a time.

4. Only the last commit of a push builds

Pushing several commits at once builds the newest one only. That is how Pipelines works, not a failure. To build an earlier commit, start it by hand from its page (below).

5. The commit message says [skip ci]

[skip ci] or [ci skip] in the message skips the build on purpose. It is easy to miss in a merge commit or a message written by a tool. Check the commit on the Commits page.

6. The push was too large to announce

Pipelines learns about a push through a webhook, and its payload is limited to 256 KB. Very long commit messages in the push, or a very long pull request description for a pull-requests pipeline, can go over it, and then nothing runs. Atlassian says only its support team can check the payload size.

Start the build by hand

From Atlassian's article, any of these:

• The repository's Pipelines page: Run pipeline, near the top right.
• Branches: the three dots of the branch, Run pipeline for a branch.
• Commits: open the commit, Run pipeline, bottom right. This is how to build a commit that was not the last of its push.
• A custom pipeline with variables, or from a script with the REST API: run a custom pipeline.

Run Bitbucket pipelines from IntelliJ IDEA

Pipeline Inbox for Bitbucket Pipelines, a plugin by Lesstep for JetBrains IDEs 2024.1 or later, lists the pipelines of all your Bitbucket Cloud repositories in an IDE tool window, each with the part of bitbucket-pipelines.yml it ran (default, branches, custom or pull-requests) and what started it, so a push that started nothing shows as a gap on your branch. With Pro, Run Pipeline starts one on a branch from the IDE, the branch's own pipeline or any custom pipeline, with a field for each variable it declares; Run again builds the same commit once more. The list, steps and logs are free; running, re-running and stopping are Pro (US$1.50 a month, with a 30-day trial).

Get it on JetBrains Marketplace

Atlassian, Bitbucket and Bitbucket Pipelines are trademarks of Atlassian; IntelliJ IDEA is a trademark of JetBrains s.r.o. This page is not affiliated with or endorsed by Atlassian or JetBrains.

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