Note
October 31, 2026
2 min read
Some Mistakes Come with an Invoice
By Cristiano Pierry
Individually sensible checks grew into a computing bill I kept increasing before looking at what the whole process was costing.
During October, I found myself raising my GitHub Actions budget from $25 to $50, then to $75. We kept exhausting it, and by $75 I’d run out of patience with my increasingly expensive approach to keeping things moving.
We were running automated checks on my projects. I had no idea those checks were running on Linux computers rented from GitHub. As we built more, we kept improving the development process too. Another check seemed sensible. So did the next one. There was always more work to do, and the process grew along with it. I was very involved in all this progress, including approving the budget increases.
Our Linux usage reached 15,121 minutes in October. That’s about 252 hours of rented computing time, more than eleven times September’s usage. When Bob, my Dots agent, told me once again that we were out of budget, that hit a nerve. At that point, I wanted a better explanation than the fact that we’d been busy.
I can see how I let it happen. Each addition had a purpose, and raising the limit let us get back to work. Somewhere in that sequence, I needed to stop and look at what the whole process was costing. Instead, I kept giving it another $25 and another chance to behave.
We already had two Mac minis and Codex cloud computers available for this work. When I asked the agent to help move the checks, it proposed installing a Linux virtual machine on one of the Minis. I hadn’t realized I was renting Linux computers. Now we were discussing putting one inside my Mac. I quickly put a stop to that idea.
We’re now moving the checks off GitHub’s rented computers while keeping the validation we need. That work is still underway, and I need to pay more attention to what we’re asking to run each time we make a change.
This was also a reminder of how much technical understanding these frontier tools still require. The tools will get better. For now, I need to be on my toes.
I’d like to get through November without becoming quite so familiar with the budget settings.
This writing reflects my personal perspectives on product management, AI, and content discovery. It does not represent the official position of my employer or any affiliated organization.