One of these days I'll get a more automated workflow for exporting/uploading to itch. I've never used this sr.ht or .yml files? You have a good resource that explains what it all is and how it works?
Viewing post in Reflections: In a Strange Place jam comments
sr.ht is just a git repository host, similar to Gitlab/Github. I used that as an example because their build system is simpler than GitHub’s (which looked like this for our game this jam. Though as far as why yours didn’t work, it seems most games uploaded a zip file with the exe/pck, whereas your game was a single exe. The single exe probably should work, and the fact that it didn’t might be a bug with itch.