How is a yaml file suppposed to load in my Python script?

Question

I'm trying to clone a remote repo, open a certain yaml file, update a couple keys, then stage and push it back to remote. But I can't stage nor commit the file, since my script seems to be ignoring my updates.

I load the file and add the keys I want to update into a update_values variable

yaml_file_path = "build.yml"
try:

    with open(yaml_file_path, 'r') as file:
        data = yaml.safe_load(file)


    update_values = {
        'key1': 'q700mb',
        'key2': 'xyz',
    }

then try to "write" the updates back into it

    for key, value in update_values.items():
        if key in data:
            data[key] = value

    
    with open(yaml_file_path, 'w') as file:
        yaml.dump(data, file)

except Exception as e:
    print("error when touching the YAML file: {e}")

My commit fails stating there is nothing to be updated. Then I open and log the content of the file I expect to be update, just to check

print("updated yaml file: ")
with open(yaml_file_path,'r') as file:
    updated_yaml = file.read()
    print(updated_yaml)

But everything remains untouched