feat: skip Claude step gracefully when Anthropic API is unavailable

[sfreudenthaler]

Summary

• Add pre-flight API availability check before running claude-code-action
• Skip the Claude step gracefully (warning, not failure) when the API returns 5xx or is unreachable
• Belt-and-suspenders: continue-on-error: true + post-execution re-check distinguishes service outages from legitimate errors

Problem

When the Anthropic API is down, the Claude step fails with a hard error, blocking the entire CI pipeline. Example: dotCMS/core run 24461196854

API Error: 500 {"type":"error","error":{"type":"api_error","message":"Internal server error"}} · check status.claude.com

Solution

Two layers of protection in claude-executor.yml:

Layer 1 — Pre-flight check (catches most outages):

• curl the /v1/models endpoint with a 15s timeout before running Claude
• 5xx / network failures → available=false → skip Claude step → warn and succeed
• Auth errors (401/403), rate limits (429) → available=true → proceed so action can surface the specific error

Layer 2 — Runtime protection (catches mid-execution degradation):

• continue-on-error: true on the Claude step
• Post-execution step checks if Claude failed
• If failed AND API is now returning 500 → skip gracefully (service issue)
• If failed AND API is now returning 200 → re-fail with "legitimate error" message

Test

Validated in dotCMS/core-workflow-test#460:

• Pre-flight check correctly passes when API is available
• Handle Claude execution result correctly re-fails for non-service errors (workflow validation failure in test PR)
• The skip path is code-correct (would activate when API returns 5xx)

Consumer repos to update after merge

• dotCMS/core — update @v2.0.0 → new tag
• dotCMS/core-workflow-test — update @v2.0.0 → new tag

Fixes: dotCMS/core#35328

[chatgpt-codex-connector]

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[chatgpt-codex-connector]

Fail workflow on non-service Claude errors

The post-failure classifier treats every non-200 response as a service outage, so legitimate errors like invalid/missing API key (401/403) or rate limiting (429) will now be silently downgraded to a warning and the job will succeed. This is a regression introduced by continue-on-error: true plus this broad * branch: when Run Claude Code fails for auth/config issues, Handle Claude execution result no longer re-fails the job, which can hide broken CI configuration.

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