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ci-spend

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Rules from common-docs/policies/ci-spend.md — edit there, never here (python3 common-docs/meta/scripts/one_home.py --write).

1. Ceiling: $100 a week of real money for building and shipping software (Arman, 2026-10-18). One total, never one service judged alone:
   • GitHub Actions actually billed (netAmount; organization AI-Matrix-Engine and personal armanisadeghi), never list price;
   • RunsOn's AWS cost (Cost Explorer, tag stack=runs-on);
   • CI subscriptions as a weekly share, 52 weeks a year (monthly x 12 / 52, yearly / 52): GitHub Enterprise seats (count and price read from GitHub), GitHub Pro, the RunsOn license (from its start date). Each line shows its $/week and its share of the total. Every price and the cap are billing.ci_spend.* knobs; no lane raises the cap. List price only forecasts when the free GitHub minutes run out: that is a future-billing alarm, never "off track".
2. Cadence. Only aidream and ai-matrx ride the ~30-minute train. Every other app releases on meaningful change. Matrx Desktop: macOS builds only on Arman's Mac (never on GitHub), Windows/Linux at most twice a week (Arman, 2026-10-15). Matrx Local: paused, no builds (Arman, 2026-10-15). Overnight releases run hourly when main changed. No package version without a real content change. Waste to hunt first: cascading package republishes from small changes.
3. Every workflow change states its cost. Each workflow has an entry in the repo's .github/ci-cost.json (trigger, runs/week, minutes, OS, $/week, benefit). check_workflow_runner_cost.py fails a workflow without one or with a stale one.
4. Cost without benefit is a defect. Recognize it by these shapes:
   • Red runs repeated without a fix. The ci-breaker label pauses a workflow after 3 reds in a row.
   • Mac or Windows runners on push.
   • A schedule more frequent than the thing it watches changes.
   • Republishing or rebuilding unchanged artifacts.
   • Duplicate workflows doing one job (in one repo or across repos).
   • Polling or waiting on a paid runner.
   • A job with no timeout-minutes.
   • Manual dispatch loops. Every dispatch carries requested_by.
5. Never work around a billing or spending block. No moving the job to another repo, account or runner. Stop and tell Arman in plain English.
6. A spend report is the weekly total, then each component with its $/week and % of total, then the waste found and fixed (cascading package republishes from small changes first). The agent-facing notice stays silent unless the 7-day GitHub list-price figure (week_usd) is at least $200; below that only Arman and the owner session see alarms (Arman, 2026-10-18).<!-- rules:stamp-end -->

The law is ci-spend.md; read it, it is short. How to apply it:

1. Before touching a workflow, write its .github/ci-cost.json entry first (trigger, runs/week, minutes, OS, $/week, benefit). Run python3 scripts/check_workflow_runner_cost.py. If $/week has no benefit you can name, do not add the workflow.
2. Prefer paths: filters, Linux runners, timeout-minutes, concurrency with cancel-in-progress, and a path or content-hash check before publishing.
3. Dispatching a workflow: pass requested_by; never loop a dispatch; if a run goes red, fix it before dispatching again.
4. Billing or spending block: stop. Do not move the job elsewhere. Tell Arman in plain English.
5. Seen cost without benefit (any shape in the policy): fix it if it is yours, else one plain sentence to Arman: what, roughly how much, no benefit.
6. Check spend: GET /ci-spend/status (the weekly total, each component's $/week and share, the cap), or the one-liner in the policy for GitHub alone. Off track means the weekly total of real money is over the cap; free minutes running out is future billing.