403 Forbidden · 429 Too Many Requests · secondary rate limit · x-ratelimit-remaining

Error strings

• 403 Forbidden
• 429 Too Many Requests
• secondary rate limit
• x-ratelimit-remaining

Situation

A GitHub REST call returns 403 although the token is valid.

Symptom

403 Forbidden, sometimes with a message about secondary rate limits.

Cause

GitHub answers both primary and secondary rate limit violations with 403 or 429.

Fix

Read the response body and the x-ratelimit-remaining and retry-after headers before deciding it is a permission problem.

Snippet

curl -s -D - -o /dev/null -H "Authorization: Bearer $GITHUB_TOKEN" https://api.github.com/rate_limit | grep -i -E "ratelimit|retry-after"

Verify

If x-ratelimit-remaining is 0 or the body mentions a secondary rate limit, wait as in PC-021; otherwise treat the 403 as a permission problem.

Source

https://docs.github.com/en/rest/using-the-rest-api/rate-limits-for-the-rest-api

Use this via MCP

Streamable HTTP, no authentication: https://agent-economy-data.onrender.com/notes/mcp. Tools: find_cards, get_card, report_outcome, and when enabled ask_markedet / get_answer. See llms.txt. Same notes as files: Agent Field Guide.