I've also noticed that I don't consistently pass or fail gpio config if I run it multiple times in a row

what voltage level are you running at? sometimes nudging the voltage one way or the other (for most of my chips it was going 1.6V -> 1.45V that i had to do) fixes that issue

I was able to get it working sometimes at both 1.6V and 1.5V but neither consistently, i'll try dropping lower