About $500 of Surprise GitHub Actions Usage Traced to One Forgotten Fork: A Hermes Agent Found the 25-Hour Canary Job
- Level Intermediate
- Setup1–3 hrs (estimated)
- Evidence Some evidence
- CostNot stated in source
- No-codeNo
What they did
GitHub showed him about $500 of Actions usage on a repo he barely touches. None of it was billed because the repo is public. His Hermes Agent traced it to a fork he made on Sep 21. A sync on Oct 1 started 11 inherited workflows, 57 came with the fork, and 268 scheduled runs fired. One canary job ran about 25 hours a day, nine times, for 228 hours of runner time. The other 91 recent runs took 24 minutes. 96% of the gross came from macOS runners.
How it went
X post by @sudoPhoeniX (Oct 28, 2026 UTC): ~$500 gross Actions usage ($0 billed) traced to a forgotten fork; 57 inherited workflows, 268 scheduled runs, one canary job used 228 runner-hours. On private repos this would be billed. Disable Actions on forks you don't use
Worth knowing
- X post by @sudoPhoeniX (Oct 28, 2026 UTC): ~$500 gross Actions usage ($0 billed) traced to a forgotten fork; 57 inherited workflows, 268 scheduled runs, one canary job used 228 runner-hours.
- On private repos this would be billed. Disable Actions on forks you don't use.
Prompt
Cleaned version rewritten from the source — not a direct quote.
Look at my GitHub Actions usage for [account/repo] over [period]. List which workflows ran, how many times, how long each took, the runner type and the gross cost. Find workflows I didn't write myself (for example, inherited from forks) and anything on a schedule. Recommend what to disable, but don't change anything yet.
Recommended
Try it in Grok Bot
Grok Bot can do this too: give it read access to your GitHub account and ask for the same usage breakdown.
- Copy the prompt (button below).
- Open Grok Bot chat and paste it. Replace any [bracketed] placeholders.
- Connect the listed tools (GitHub) as connectors when Grok Bot asks.
- If the task repeats, ask: "Make this a daily routine."
Alternatives: the same prompt works in Hermes Agent, Claude, ChatGPT Agent, OpenClaw.
Set it up
Tools: GitHub · Stack: Hermes Agent
- Read the original source for full context.
- Connect the tools your agent needs.
- Paste the prompt and replace [bracketed] placeholders.
- Run once manually and check the output before scheduling it.
Generic suggested steps, not from the source.
Evidence
X post by @sudoPhoeniX (Oct 28, 2026 UTC): ~$500 gross Actions usage ($0 billed) traced to a forgotten fork; 57 inherited workflows, 268 scheduled runs, one canary job used 228 runner-hours. On private repos this would be billed. Disable Actions on forks you don't use
Source: X · 2026-10-28 · Verified by us: not yet · Report broken or outdated