CircleCI "Spin up environment: failed"

By Daniel Zoghalchali·Latchkey

The first "Spin up environment" step failed, so the job never started. CircleCI could not provision the executor - usually an image pull failure, capacity, or a transient infrastructure error.

What this error means

The job fails on the "Spin up environment" step before any of your steps run. The message may reference an image pull, a provisioning error, or simply "failed". It is often intermittent.

Spin up environment
Error response from daemon: ... failed to spin up environment
# or
Error: failed to provision executor (transient infrastructure error)

Common causes

Image pull failure during provisioning

A bad image tag, missing registry auth, or a rate-limited pull stops the environment from coming up.

Transient infrastructure or capacity issue

A momentary platform-side provisioning failure or capacity constraint for the requested resource class fails spin-up. These usually clear on retry.

How to fix it

Rule out image and auth problems

1. Confirm the docker/machine image tag exists and is spelled correctly.
2. Add an auth: block or context for private images.
3. Validate the resource class is available for your plan.

Retry transient provisioning failures

When spin-up fails for infrastructure reasons, a re-run typically succeeds.

How to prevent it

• Pin valid image tags and provide registry auth up front.
• Use resource classes available on your plan.
• Add retry-on-failure for jobs prone to transient spin-up issues.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

References

• GitHub Actions documentation