OIDC trusted publishing + GitHub Personal Access Token?

[edemaine]

My repository needs to use a GitHub Personal Access Token in order to bypass branch protection to push Git commits to main. (Sorry, I know this is discouraged, but it's where we are.)

I'd also like to move to the new OIDC trusted publishing system. However, PATs don't seem have an id-token scope. I'm guessing it's only possible via GitHub Action's GITHUB_TOKEN and permissions.

Is this configuration possible? My intuition was to set both GITHUB_TOKEN (GitHub Actions) and GH_TOKEN (PAT). This seems to use the PAT so Git push works, but doesn't use GITHUB_TOKEN so NPM fails. Here's a sample run: https://github.com/KaTeX/KaTeX/actions/runs/21322336014/job/61374048157

ci.yml

name: CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  test:
    ...omitted for brevity...
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: github.event_name == 'push'
    environment: release
    needs: test

    # https://github.com/semantic-release/npm
    permissions:
      contents: write # to be able to publish a GitHub release
      issues: write # to be able to comment on released issues
      pull-requests: write # to be able to comment on released pull requests
      id-token: write # to enable use of OIDC for trusted publishing and npm provenance

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      with:
        persist-credentials: false
        fetch-depth: 0

    - name: Enable Corepack
      run: corepack enable

    - name: Use Node.js 22
      uses: actions/setup-node@v4
      with:
        node-version: '22'

    - name: Install dependencies
      run: yarn --immutable
      env:
        YARN_ENABLE_SCRIPTS: 0 # disable postinstall scripts
    - name: Run semantic-release
      run: yarn run semantic-release --debug
      env:
        GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_TOKEN }}
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        GIT_AUTHOR_NAME: KaTeX bot
        GIT_AUTHOR_EMAIL: 33710906+KaTeX-bot@users.noreply.github.com
        GIT_COMMITTER_NAME: KaTeX bot
        GIT_COMMITTER_EMAIL: 33710906+KaTeX-bot@users.noreply.github.com
        NPM_AUTH_TOKEN: ""

.releaserc

{
  "branches": "main",
  "plugins": [
    ["@semantic-release/commit-analyzer", {
      "releaseRules": [
        {breaking: true, release: 'minor'},
        {type: 'feat', release: 'patch'},
      ],
    }],
    "@semantic-release/release-notes-generator",
    ["@semantic-release/changelog", {
      "changelogTitle": "# Changelog\nAll notable changes to this project will be documented in this file. This CHANGELOG roughly follows the guidelines from [www.keepachangelog.com](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.0.0/).",
    }],
    "@semantic-release/npm",
    ["@semantic-release/git", {
      "assets": ["docs", "package.json", "CHANGELOG.md", "README.md", "contrib/*/README.md", "website/pages/index.html"],
      "message": "chore(release): ${nextRelease.version} [ci skip]\n\n${nextRelease.notes}",
    }],
    ["@semantic-release/github", {
      "assets": [
        {path: 'katex.tar.gz', label: 'tarball'},
        {path: 'katex.zip', label: 'zip'},
      ],
    }],
  ],
}

package.json

{
  "name": "katex",
  "version": "0.16.27",
  "description": "Fast math typesetting for the web.",
  ...omitted for brevity...
  "packageManager": "yarn@4.1.1",
  "devDependencies": {
    "@semantic-release/changelog": "^6.0.3",
    "@semantic-release/git": "^10.0.1",
    "semantic-release": "^25.0.2",
    ...omitted for brevity...
  },
  "scripts": {
    "semantic-release": "semantic-release",
    ...omitted for brevity...
  },
  ...omitted for brevity...
}

I also seem to be running into #1051 by the way. I have similar errors in the run above. But I'm not sure whether that's blocking.

[sparten11740]

My understanding is that id-token does not control a permission on the injected GITHUB_TOKEN but writes an OIDC token to the ACTIONS_ID_TOKEN_REQUEST_TOKEN env variable, which in turn can be used to request a short lived access token from the NPM registry (the npm cli does this here for example). That means you should be able to use your PAT without problems as long as you still set below at the same time

permissions: 
  id-token: write

Sorry, I know this is discouraged, but it's where we are.

A little less discouraged would be to use app installation tokens (e.g. via the create-github-app-token action) because they are short-lived and auto-revoked when a workflow completes. If you use the new rulesets instead of legacy branch protection rules, you can set a Github app on bypass.