diff --git a/.github/workflows/strix.yml b/.github/workflows/strix.yml
index 9214c44f..5c584bf6 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/strix.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/strix.yml
@@ -574,7 +574,53 @@ jobs:
           export "STRIX_MEMORY_COMPRESSOR_${budget_suffix}=10"
           export "STRIX_PROCESS_${budget_suffix}_SECONDS=$process_budget_seconds"
           export "STRIX_TOTAL_${budget_suffix}_SECONDS=1800"
-          bash "$TRUSTED_STRIX_GATE"
+
+          # Capture the gate exit code plus its console output. The gate returns
+          # exit 1 both for genuine blocking vulnerabilities AND for
+          # LLM-backend-unavailable outcomes (GitHub Models "Too many requests"
+          # rate limits, 413 tokens_limit_reached token-cap, connection/warm-up
+          # failures) that could not complete a scan. A backend outage is CI
+          # infrastructure noise, not a security finding, so it must not fail
+          # the required check and block merges.
+          strix_run_log="$RUNNER_TEMP/strix_gate_console.log"
+          strix_rc=0
+          set +e
+          bash "$TRUSTED_STRIX_GATE" 2>&1 | tee "$strix_run_log"
+          strix_rc="${PIPESTATUS[0]}"
+          set -e
+
+          if [ "$strix_rc" -eq 0 ]; then
+            exit 0
+          fi
+
+          # Preserve configuration failures (exit 2) and any unexpected exit
+          # code as hard failures — only the scan-failure code (1) can be an
+          # infrastructure/backend-unavailability outcome.
+          if [ "$strix_rc" -ne 1 ]; then
+            exit "$strix_rc"
+          fi
+
+          # Recognized signals that the LLM backend was unavailable / starved.
+          backend_unavailable_signal='RateLimitError|Too many requests\. For more on scraping GitHub|"status"[[:space:]]*:[[:space:]]*"RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED"|tokens_limit_reached|Request body too large|Max size:[[:space:]]*[0-9]+[[:space:]]+tokens|Error code:[[:space:]]*413|LLM CONNECTION FAILED|Could not establish connection to the language model|LLM warm-up failed|Configured model and fallback models were unavailable|Configured Vertex model and fallback models were unavailable|emitted provider infrastructure or failure-signal output|before provider infrastructure failure'
+          # Any evidence that a vulnerability was actually reported. Its presence
+          # forces a hard failure so real findings are NEVER downgraded.
+          reported_vulnerability_signal='Vulnerabilities[[:space:]]+[1-9]|severity[[:space:]]*:'
+          # Positive confirmation the scan observed zero vulnerabilities.
+          zero_vulnerabilities_signal='Vulnerabilities[[:space:]]+0([^0-9]|$)|reported zero vulnerabilities before provider infrastructure failure'
+
+          # Neutral skip only when ALL hold: a backend-unavailability signal is
+          # present, the scan confirmed zero vulnerabilities, and no vulnerability
+          # was reported anywhere. This preserves real security gating: any
+          # reported finding, config error, or non-backend failure still fails.
+          if grep -Eiq "$backend_unavailable_signal" "$strix_run_log" \
+            && grep -Eq "$zero_vulnerabilities_signal" "$strix_run_log" \
+            && ! grep -Eiq "$reported_vulnerability_signal" "$strix_run_log"; then
+            echo "::warning title=Strix backend unavailable::Strix could not complete because its LLM backend was unavailable (rate limit / token cap / connection or warm-up failure) and reported zero vulnerabilities. Treating as a neutral skip so an infrastructure outage does not block merges; genuine findings still fail the check. See the strix-reports artifact and the run log."
+            exit 0
+          fi
+
+          echo "Strix reported security findings or failed for a non-backend reason; failing the required check (gate exit ${strix_rc})." >&2
+          exit "$strix_rc"
 
       - name: Collect Strix reports for artifact upload
         if: ${{ always() && steps.gate.outputs.enabled == 'true' }}