Allow user-set workers/triggered_by annotation (or dashboard fallback rendering) for CI-based deploys

[batchprocess128]

Summary

wrangler deploy and wrangler versions upload set annotations.workers/triggered_by to "version_upload" automatically. This causes Cloudflare's dashboard Version History to display "Author: Unknown" for all CI-based deploys.

The Workers Builds Git integration (Cloudflare's dashboard-managed Git build path) sets workers/triggered_by to a value like "github:<username>", which the dashboard renders as proper attribution. But teams that prefer GitHub Actions (using cloudflare/wrangler-action) over Workers Builds for explicitness / repeatability lose this attribution as a side effect.

This creates an unnecessary trade-off. Letting CI deploys produce proper attribution would close the gap.

Use case

We run cloudflare/wrangler-action@v3 from GitHub Actions on push to main. Our deploy chain is:

1. GitHub Action checkout
2. wrangler deploy --message "<commit subject>"
3. Verify live site
4. Post deployment record to GitHub

This gives us full visibility into the deploy step (vs the Workers Builds Git integration, which is a less inspectable build path). Trade-off is the Author column on Cloudflare dashboard now reads "Unknown".

We'd like to keep wrangler-CLI deploys as the canonical path AND have proper deploy attribution.

Current behavior

After running wrangler deploy:

"annotations": {
  "workers/message": "feat: ...",
  "workers/triggered_by": "version_upload"
}

The dashboard renders the row as by Unknown.

Attempted workarounds

1. PATCH the version annotations after upload:

   PATCH /accounts/{id}/workers/scripts/{name}/versions/{version_id}
   Body: {"annotations": {"workers/triggered_by": "github:<actor>"}}
   

   In our test, this returned 10405: Method not allowed for this authentication scheme. We could not find a documented update endpoint for Worker versions in the public API; versions appear to be immutable post-upload.

2. Set workers/triggered_by in the multipart upload metadata:
   Per the multipart-upload-metadata docs, the annotations field accepts workers/message, workers/tag, workers/alias. workers/triggered_by is not listed and appears to be reserved.

3. Cosmetic workaround: bake author into --message so it renders as "<subject> (by <author>)" in the Description column. Author column stays as Unknown.

Proposed solutions

(A) Allow user-set workers/triggered_by in the multipart upload annotations object. wrangler would expose a new flag:

wrangler deploy --message "..." --triggered-by "github:user123"

(B) Auto-detect GitHub Actions context in wrangler when running under GHA (env vars GITHUB_ACTIONS=true, GITHUB_ACTOR). Auto-set workers/triggered_by to github-actions:${GITHUB_ACTOR} unless explicitly overridden.

(C) Dashboard fallback rendering. If workers/triggered_by is "version_upload", the dashboard could fall back to metadata.author_email, API token name, or a wrangler source field instead of "Unknown". This may be more palatable than letting users set a reserved annotation directly, since the substantive data (token-owner identity) is already on the version object.

(B) is the most substantive for end-users: every wrangler-action user gets correct attribution without code changes on their side. (A) is the lower-level building block. (C) avoids the reserved-annotation question entirely and may be the cleanest fix from Cloudflare's side.

Why this matters

The Workers Builds vs wrangler-action choice should not require losing attribution. Today users have to pick:

• Workers Builds: dashboard-managed Git integration with less inspectable build path; full Author attribution
• wrangler-action via GHA: explicit, repeatable, version-controlled; "Unknown" Author

That's an unnecessary trade-off that doesn't reflect the underlying capability — the version data already includes a token-owner identity that could be surfaced.

Repos / surfaces involved

• cloudflare/workers-sdk (wrangler) → flag and/or auto-detection
• cloudflare/wrangler-action → potentially benefits without changes if (B) is shipped
• Cloudflare dashboard rendering layer → for option (C)
• Cloudflare API multipart-upload-metadata → annotation schema, if (A)

Happy to provide a draft PR if helpful.