Can't push to protected branch in GitHub Action - github-actions

Question

I have a GitHub action that I have created in order to create a new version and publish it for our JS repo. It looks similar to this
steps:
# Checks-out your repository under $GITHUB_WORKSPACE, so your job can access it
- uses: actions/checkout#v2
- uses: actions/setup-node#v1
with:
node-version: 12.18.3
registry-url: https://npm.pkg.github.com/
scope: '<redacted>'
- name: Install Dependencies
run: npm ci
- name: Build
run: npm run build
- name: Bump Version & Push
run: |
git config --local user.email "<redacted>"
git config --local user.name "<redacted>"
npm version patch
git push https://${{ secrets.KEY }}#github.com/<redacted> HEAD:master --follow-tags
The KEY that I am using is a person access token I created from my account. I have set the repo so that I have push access to the master branch. When I try the push command from my machine with the access token it works without an issue. However every time I see this in the GitHub Action
remote: error: GH006: Protected branch update failed for refs/heads/master.
remote: error: You're not authorized to push to this branch. Visit https://docs.github.com/articles/about-protected-branches/ for more information.
I have been racking my brain trying to figure this out and I'm out to ideas. If I remove the branch protection this action works fine.

Answer 1

I think this is because of how authentication is persisted by actions/checkout. It's stored in an extraheader config option which takes precedence over the credentials you are setting manually.
Try not persisting the auth:
- uses: actions/checkout#v2
with:
persist-credentials: false
Or alternatively:
- uses: actions/checkout#v2
with:
token: ${{ secrets.KEY }}
I know this because I've had my own issue with overriding this config option in the past.