Runner status: Idle. Job status: Queued. Forever.No error. No warning. Just a job sitting in limbo while your runner does absolutely nothing.If that's you, breathe. Nothing's broken. GitHub is doing this on purpose, and the fix is one checkbox.
The Symptom
- Workflow uses runs-on: self-hosted
- Private repo: works fine
- Public repo: job stuck queued
- Runner is online, labels match, everything looks right
The Reason
Anyone can fork a public repo and open a PR. If that PR runs on your self-hosted runner, a stranger just executed code on your infrastructure.So GitHub blocks it by default. Silently.
The Fix (30 seconds)
Head to Org settings → Actions → Runner groups.
Click Default, tick Allow public repositories, then Save.
Done. Re-run your workflow and the runner will pick it up.Using a custom runner group? Same setting, same checkbox. On GitHub Enterprise? Look under Policies → Actions.
Or Skip Self-Hosting Entirely
Let's be honest. You didn't self-host runners because it was fun. You did it because GitHub-hosted runners were slow and expensive. Monk CI fixes both. One line of YAML: That's the migration. Everything else, including secrets, OIDC, matrix builds, and reusable workflows, works exactly the same.
Migration is one click
Don't want to edit YAML across dozens of repos? Our migration wizard does it for you. Point it at your org, pick your repos, click once. Monk CI opens the PRs on every repo automatically. Merge and you're on faster CI.
What you get
Feature Impact: 10x faster builds 20-min pipelines finish in 2 to 5. 40x faster Docker Remote layer sync, no storage bottleneck 4x faster caches actions/cache stops being the slow step. AI auto-heals broken builds Reads logs, finds the bug, opens a PR. Up to 75% cheaper $0.002/vCPU/min, pay-as-you-go. Zero infra to manage No patching, no scaling, no VMs. 30-second rollback if you don't like it. 5,000 free minutes per month for the first 20 orgs. ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certified. No check boxes to hunt for. No runners to babysit. Just fast CI.
Try Monk CI
Written by
himanshu sharma