Admit client repository tooling only with entitlement and funding #639

🤖 Generated by the Agentic Engineer

User Story

As the repository operator, I want public/private client repository profiles that verify entitlements and funding before enabling optional products, so that clients receive the strongest lawful included tooling without silent paid use or a weaker secure-delivery baseline.

Evidence and ownership

Maintainer-requested research checked 18 October 2026. Standard hosted Actions execution can be free in public repositories, but that is not a blanket exemption for every runner, storage tier, security/AI product or quality licence. Actual organization billing, current charges and customer contracts were not inspected. This issue belongs to .github's declarative repository/settings and shared automation owner; do not change managed GitHub settings imperatively or weaken current protection to reduce cost.

Acceptance Criteria

• Produce a dated, machine-checkable capability/cost matrix for each supported public/private profile and repository/account owner: required reviews/status enforcement/rulesets, Actions runner class/minutes, artifact/cache/package storage and transfer, dependency tools, Code Security, Secret Protection, Code Quality and optional third-party/AI reviewers. Record included, metered, seat-priced, unsupported and UNKNOWN separately; a past free preview is not present entitlement. Check feature-specific eligibility, licences, languages and actual enforcement.
• Distinguish public standard-runner compute from chargeable larger runners and other SKUs. Account for private shared allowances, artifact/cache retention, package/image visibility and self-hosted hardware/operations costs. Attribute usage to the repository's actual billing owner and client agreement; do not call a shared allowance unlimited or bill multiple clients for one shared seat without an agreed allocation.
• Model Code Security/Secret Protection and Code Quality separately. Public security availability does not prove every security/AI feature is free. Current Code Quality docs describe active-committer licensing, AI credits and scan minutes; establish the actual account-specific exemption/entitlement before enabling it. Include human versus bot attribution, billing-period/active-committer tails, paid-preview expiry and optional reviewer quotas. No Copilot requests, paid AI/API fallback or consumption of Devantler's included subscriptions on a client's behalf is authorized here.
• Verify CodeQL's actual licence for the exact analysis path: its free CLI/action terms define open source using an OSI-approved licence. A proprietary or source-available public repository is not automatically eligible. Resolve any product-doc/licence ambiguity with authoritative GitHub clarification before use; do not relabel code open source or expose private code to obtain an entitlement.
• Preserve required testing, dependency/security checks, reviewed merges, signing and least-privilege publication in every admitted mode. Use evaluated, licence-compatible non-premium controls where they meet the baseline, with honest coverage limits rather than claims of GHAS equivalence. Private repos on an insufficient plan must not silently lose merge enforcement. If the floor cannot be enforced or funded, HOLD onboarding and present the priced prerequisite/alternative; no skip, warning-only conversion or protection bypass.
• Separate optional premium enablement from mandatory controls. Require a private, current, repository/product/payer-specific agreement and operator authorization before any chargeable enablement, trial conversion, additional seat, runner class, storage increase or overage. Repository visibility is not billing authorization. Support client-direct billing where feasible; a customer promise to pay does not change GitHub's legal billing owner.
• Implement reviewed declarative defaults and permission boundaries preventing repository writers/bots from enabling unapproved premium SKUs. Verify actual budget scope and stop behavior: an alert alone is not a cap, and active-committer licence limits may only block new repository enablement, not later usage in already enabled repositories. Account-wide limits must not unexpectedly stop another client's required checks. Include renewal/entitlement drift, provider-price change, approval expiry and a safe operator runbook; unknown spend/entitlement fails closed without dropping required protection.
• Validate good public/open-source, public/proprietary and private profiles with fictional fixtures, plus absent consent, absent funding, unsupported private rulesets, larger-runner/storage mutation, enabled AI costs, exhausted shared allowances and wrong billing-owner negative controls. Inspect authoritative settings and billing capability readbacks without generating real spend. Verify configuration actually reconciles and real required checks still block a deliberate safe failure after reviewed rollout.
• Document lawful SDLC use: no public workflow wrapper that secretly builds unrelated private client projects to evade limits; no Actions-as-hosting/CDN/resold compute service. Coordinate Pages/hosting review with monorepo#4247 rather than treating public source as permission for commercial hosting. No actual visibility/billing/service change is authorized by issue creation.

Priority and dependencies

High priority, Medium effort, Risk reduction. Removes hidden-cost and governance barriers before repeatable client repository setup. Native parent is .github#56; link this as a cross-product prerequisite of the business client-choice epic. The client agreement work supplies publication/funding authority. Reuse existing repository templates, governance and drift checks; do not open replacements or weaken the current reviewed engineering contract.

Primary sources checked 18 October 2026

• Actions billing: public standard runners differ from always-billed larger runners; private allowances and storage remain separate considerations.
• Advanced Security billing and Code Quality billing: product/AI/active-committer charging must be checked separately.
• Ruleset availability: private-repository enforcement depends on plan.
• CodeQL CLI terms and CodeQL Action licence notice: check analysis rights, not visibility alone.
• Budget controls: verify each SKU's actual hard-stop semantics; limits are not interchangeable.
• Additional product terms: permitted SDLC, Actions and Pages uses are distinct.