Unable to Authenticate to GitHub Packages Using PAT in CI/CD

[not2f3f]

I’m trying to pull a private package from GitHub Packages within a GitHub Actions workflow, but authentication keeps failing.

Using a Personal Access Token (classic) with read:packages and repo scopes.

npm login and npm install work locally, but fail in Actions with HTTP 401 Unauthorized.

The workflow is using ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} and also tried a stored PAT in secrets.PACKAGES_TOKEN.

Has anyone run into issues with PAT-based authentication in CI/CD? Could this be related to token scopes or npm registry configuration in .npmrc?