CircleCI "Spin up environment ... failed" in CI

By Kaveh Alemi·Latchkey

The first job step, "Spin up environment", provisions the executor and pulls its image. A failure here means the image is wrong, private, or unreachable, so the job never reaches your steps.

What this error means

The job fails on the "Spin up environment" step with an image pull error, a manifest-not-found, or an environment startup failure.

Spin up environment
Error response from daemon: manifest for cimg/node:99.99 not found:
manifest unknown: manifest unknown

Common causes

A bad or non-existent image tag

The executor image tag does not exist (typo or removed tag), so the manifest cannot be found.

A private image without auth

The executor image is private and no auth was provided, so the pull is denied at spin-up.

How to fix it

Pin a valid, reachable image

1. Confirm the image tag exists in the registry.
2. Fix the tag or add auth for private images.
3. Re-run so spin-up succeeds.

jobs:
  build:
    docker:
      - image: cimg/node:20.11

Authenticate private executor images

Provide registry credentials so the executor image pulls during spin-up.

docker:
  - image: myorg/ci-base:1.0
    auth:
      username: $DOCKERHUB_USER
      password: $DOCKERHUB_PASS

How to prevent it

• Pin executor images to tags that exist.
• Authenticate private base images.
• Use a mirror for frequently pulled bases.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

References

• GitHub Actions documentation