Unable to run 'glab mr create' get 'You are not allowed to push code to this project.'

I'm trying to use GLab in a pipeline to create a merge request and put it in draft mode. I run:

glab mr create --fill-commit-body --yes --fill --source-branch "dev" --target-branch "staging" --draft --title "Staging Release"

I get the following error: remote: You are not allowed to push code to this project.

I check to make sure I'm logged in by running glab auth login --hostname $CI_SERVER_HOST --token $GITLAB_TOKEN right before running the glab mr create command.

I can run the exact same command locally using a terminal window with the exact same token. The token I use is a group access token with 'write repository' permissions.

These are the following things I tried and got the same error:

using a personal access token created with my GitLab account which has Maintainer permissions
explicitly set the host and token for GLab by creating $GITLAB_HOST and $GITLAB_TOKEN env variables in the GitLab project I'm running the pipeline.
ran the same glab mr create command in a different project's pipeline

When I run glab mr list --draft in the same GitLab project's pipeline it works. I don't understand why GLab is saying the token I'm using doesn't have permissions when it actually does. Is there a GitLab project setting or GLab configuration setting I'm missing? I don't know what else to try to solve this error.

UPDATE: After doing some more research, I think the error has to do with GLab uses SSH when performing Git actions. Since creating a merge request in GitLab involves a git push, I think the error has to do with SSH. GLab doesn't provide any configuration for SSH.

Solution

I was not able to resolve my original error but as a workaround I used the glab api command to create a merge request in a GitLab pipeline. This worked great with no issues.

This is the code that worked in a pipeline:

glab api --method "POST" --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: ${GITLAB_TOKEN}" projects/${CI_PROJECT_ID}/merge_requests \
      --field title="Staging Release" \
      --field description="This is a merge release description." \
      --field source_branch="dev" \
      --field target_branch="staging" \
      --field reviewer_ids="12,2,48,63"