diff --git a/.github/workflows/ci.yml b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
index dce156520..1b7fc8f80 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/ci.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/ci.yml
@@ -101,6 +101,8 @@ jobs:
         source .venv/bin/activate
         make install-ci
     - name: Test
+      env:
+        GH_READ_ONLY_ACCESS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GH_READ_ONLY_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
       run: |
         source .venv/bin/activate
         make install-detectron2
diff --git a/test_unstructured_ingest/test-ingest-github.sh b/test_unstructured_ingest/test-ingest-github.sh
index c90fe1a7e..3488537dd 100755
--- a/test_unstructured_ingest/test-ingest-github.sh
+++ b/test_unstructured_ingest/test-ingest-github.sh
@@ -3,7 +3,17 @@
 SCRIPT_DIR=$( cd -- "$( dirname -- "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" &> /dev/null && pwd )
 cd "$SCRIPT_DIR"/.. || exit 1
 
-if [[ "$CI" == "true" ]]; then
+GH_READ_ONLY_ACCESS_TOKEN=${GH_READ_ONLY_ACCESS_TOKEN:-none}
+
+ACCESS_TOKEN_FLAGS=""
+# to update test fixtures, "export OVERWRITE_FIXTURES=true" and rerun this script
+if [[ "$GH_READ_ONLY_ACCESS_TOKEN" != "none" ]]; then
+   ACCESS_TOKEN_FLAGS="--git-access-token $GH_READ_ONLY_ACCESS_TOKEN"
+elif [[ "$CI" == "true" ]]; then
+    echo "Warning: GH_READ_ONLY_ACCESS_TOKEN is not defined in the CI environment."
+    echo "This can lead to intermittent failures in test-ingest-github.sh, as non-auth'ed"
+    echo "requests are severely rate limited by GitHub."
+    echo
     if [ "$(( RANDOM % 10))" -lt 1 ] ; then
         # NOTE(crag): proper fix is being tracked here: https://github.com/Unstructured-IO/unstructured/issues/306
         echo "Skipping ingest 90% of github ingest tests to avoid rate limiting issue."
@@ -11,7 +21,7 @@ if [[ "$CI" == "true" ]]; then
     fi
 fi
 
-
+#shellcheck disable=SC2086
 PYTHONPATH=. ./unstructured/ingest/main.py \
     --metadata-exclude filename \
     --github-url dcneiner/Downloadify \
@@ -19,7 +29,7 @@ PYTHONPATH=. ./unstructured/ingest/main.py \
     --structured-output-dir github-downloadify-output \
     --reprocess \
     --preserve-downloads \
-    --verbose
+    --verbose $ACCESS_TOKEN_FLAGS
 
 OVERWRITE_FIXTURES=${OVERWRITE_FIXTURES:-false}