docs: state that Actions are advisory and deploys are not gated on them - #89
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Actions are not paid for on these repos, so jobs stop running whenever the spending limit is hit. That has repeatedly looked like a blocked release when nothing was actually blocked. Verified while syncing downstreams: - Vercel deploys through its own Git integration, independent of Actions. shipkit-www shipped two production deployments on 2026-09-16 while every one of its Actions jobs was failing on billing. - No repo requires status checks. Branch protection needs GitHub Pro on a private repo, so the API returns 403 and there is nothing to satisfy. A red check cannot block a merge; only a person can. - ignoreCommand never skips production. vercel-ignore-step.sh exits 1 for VERCEL_ENV=production, so a live site cannot be left stale. Also records how to recognise a job that never ran: billing-blocked jobs fail in under ten seconds and carry the "recent account payments have failed" annotation. That is not a code failure and carries no signal. What gates a release is local verify plus the Vercel build. [skip ci]
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lacymorrow
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Sep 19, 2026
The note added in #89 said billing-blocked jobs fail in under about ten seconds. That is not dependable. A shipkit-www "Lint (biome + eslint + prettier)" job reported 38s and looked exactly like a real lint failure, but its annotation was the payments message and the job had never run. Reading the check-run annotation is the only reliable test, so say that and drop the duration heuristic. [skip ci]
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Actions are not paid for on these repos, so jobs stop running whenever the spending limit is hit. That has repeatedly looked like a blocked release when nothing was actually blocked, including for me while syncing downstreams this week.
What I verified
gh api .../branches/main/protectionreturns 403, so there is nothing to satisfyscripts/vercel-ignore-step.shexits 1 forVERCEL_ENV=production; only preview builds skip, and only on[skip ci]So a red X from Actions cannot block a merge or a deploy. Only a person can, by waiting on it.
Why write it down
A billing-blocked job fails in under ten seconds with "The job was not started because recent account payments have failed or your spending limit needs to be increased". It looks identical to a real failure in the PR checks list. The doc records how to tell them apart (
gh api repos/<owner>/<repo>/check-runs/<id>/annotations) and states plainly that such a job carries no signal.What gates a release is local
verifyplus the Vercel build. Actions being green is a bonus, not a requirement.Docs only, no code change. Commit carries
[skip ci].