Git sync error after reconnecting cleared Fabric workspace

Hi,

That error actually has nothing to do with Git: PowerBIMetadataWorkspaceArtifactsQuotaExceededException is the 1000-item-per-workspace limit (Fabric + Power BI combined) kicking in.

"But the workspace is empty, I deleted everything manually!" — and that's exactly where it gets you. If Item Recovery / the workspace Recycle bin is enabled in your tenant, deleted items don't actually go away, they sit in a soft-deleted state for 7–90 days. And Microsoft's own API docs state it plainly: soft-deleted items still count toward the workspace item limit.

So here's what happens: the workspace looks empty but still "weighs" the same as before, then the Git sync tries to recreate every item from scratch → double the count → over quota → boom.

How to fix it:

1. Open the workspace → Recycle bin (in the left-hand nav)
2. Select everything → Delete permanently (needs Workspace Admin). ⚠️ irreversible, so make sure everything you care about is in the repo first
3. Re-run the Git update

If there are too many items to do by hand, use the API:

DELETE https://api.fabric.microsoft.com/v1/workspaces/{workspaceId}/recoverableItems/{itemId}

For next time, when you empty a workspace just hard delete directly and skip the whole problem:

DELETE https://api.fabric.microsoft.com/v1/workspaces/{workspaceId}/items/{itemId}?hardDelete=True

If the recycle bin is already empty and you're still getting quota exceeded, check for the "ghost" items that don't show up in the list but count anyway:

• Dataflow Gen2 staging artifacts (DataflowsStagingLakehouse / DataflowsStagingWarehouse)
• SQL analytics endpoints + default semantic models auto-created with every Lakehouse/Warehouse
• Usage Metrics reports and their semantic models

To see the real count: GET https://api.fabric.microsoft.com/v1/workspaces/{workspaceId}/items, or the Admin Monitoring workspace → Feature adoption and usage report, Inventory section.

One last practical note: if that workspace has no special permissions/settings/capacity assignments you'd have to rebuild, it's often easier to just spin up a new one and connect the repo there — 5 minutes instead of chasing dirty metadata. And if the workspace had nowhere near 1000 items and none of the above explains the number, then it's stuck metadata on the backend: open a support ticket with that Request ID.

Hope that helps, let us know how it goes 👍