Have ephemeral JIT runners started enforcing an idle minutes limit?

[enescakir]

Recently, we've been observing an increased number of ephemeral JIT runners being removed from the server after listening for jobs for 2 to 6 minutes, mostly close to 6 minutes.

Has GitHub started enforcing an idle minutes limit for ephemeral JIT runners? If so, what is the limit, and is there any documentation about it?

Example 1

Sep 16 15:14:45: √ Connected to GitHub
Sep 16 15:14:46: Current runner version: '2.337.0'
Sep 16 15:14:46: 2026-09-16 15:14:46Z: Listening for Jobs
Sep 16 15:16:47: The runner no longer exists on the server. Cleaning up local configuration.
Sep 16 15:16:47: √ Removed .credentials
Sep 16 15:16:47: √ Removed .runner
Sep 16 15:16:47: Runner listener exit with 0 return code, stop the service, no retry needed.
Sep 16 15:16:47: Exiting runner...

Example 2

Sep 16 17:26:15: √ Connected to GitHub
Sep 16 17:26:16: Current runner version: '2.337.0'
Sep 16 17:26:16: 2026-09-16 17:26:16Z: Listening for Jobs
Sep 16 17:32:17: The runner no longer exists on the server. Cleaning up local configuration.
Sep 16 17:32:17: √ Removed .credentials
Sep 16 17:32:17: √ Removed .runner
Sep 16 17:32:17: Runner listener exit with 0 return code, stop the service, no retry needed.
Sep 16 17:32:17: Exiting runner...

[luketomlinson]

@enescakir do you have a sessionId for your runner we could look at?

[enescakir]

@enescakir do you have a sessionId for your runner we could look at?

@luketomlinson How can I find the sessionId? I couldn't find it in the _diag logs.

It's also hard to access _diag logs for previous runners since it doesn't happen all the time. The occurrence increased after Sep 13-14. Is there anything else I can share to help identify it for older runners other than sessionId?

[luketomlinson]

@enescakir it'd be in the _diag logs. It'll be a query param to the messages endpoint ?sessionId=<your_id>

If you don't have a session id, you can also let us know the org/repo/enterprise where the runner is registered, along with the integer runner id (available in the UI/API).

The .runner file on disk also has the identifying info.

If you don't want to drop it in this public issue you can email it to my handle @github.com