GitHub Actions Crons That Actually Stay Green

Short summary

GitHub Actions crons often report success despite doing no work when APIs fail or tokens expire. After incidents that starved content queues unnoticed for days, the author implemented three fixes: health checks at job start (fail fast), no exception swallowing (crash loudly), and queue low-water marks with GitHub issue alerts that fire at 5 items remaining, not zero.

• •Health checks before work, not after, prevent half-failed states
• •Never swallow exceptions; let crashes be loud and informative
• •Queue low-water alarms (5 items, not zero) provide 48-hour warning before starvation

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