Top all-time · #3290
Blacksmith
Company blog · blacksmith.sh/blog · on HN as tsaifuprogrammingstartups
Blacksmith is the company blog at blacksmith.sh, writing about programming and startups. Since 2024, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 45 times, most often “Blacksmith: GitHub Actions, twice as fast, half the cost”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (7) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Blacksmith's blog and homepage in discussions of GitHub Actions runners and CI pricing. One commenter says its pricing-change article explains the release better than GitHub's own announcement.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 7 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Speed up your GitHub actions with Blacksmith. Run CI/CD 2x faster, download caches 4x faster, build Docker images 40x faster, and eliminate queue times. Start free today.
Most-linked posts?
- Blacksmith: GitHub Actions, twice as fast, half the cost5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2024-08-05
- We built a logging platform for GitHub Actions with ClickHouse3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-07-02
- The GitHub Actions control plane is no longer free3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-12-16
- What is your CI job talking to?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-07-20
- What it was like going through YC W242 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-04-22
- Why MCP Code Mode Loses Cold, and Wins Warm2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-08-24
- How the economics of multitenancy work2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-05-14
- Stacked Diffs Can Be Expensive: Why You Should Do It More2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-08-31
What Hacker News says?
this article explains release better than github itself https://www.blacksmith.sh/blog/actions-pricing
Comment linking /blog/actions-pricing
on “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions”Submitted The GitHub Actions control plane is no longer free as a story · 216 points
HN discussionRelated: Github Actions control plane is no longer free https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46291500 https://www.blacksmith.sh/blog/actions-pricing
Comment linking /blog/actions-pricing
on “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions”Submitted Cache is King: A guide for Docker layer caching in GitHub Actions as a story · 210 points
HN discussionGitHub Actions started off great as they were quickly iterating, but it very much seems that GitHub has taken its eye of the ball and the improvements have all but halted. It's really upsetting how little attention Actions is getting these days (< https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/categories/act... > tells the story -- the most popular issues have gone completely unanswered). Sad to see Earthly halting d…
Comment linking /
on “The Pain That Is GitHub Actions”Submitted How the economics of multitenancy work as a story · 186 points
HN discussionre: #1, Blacksmith ( https://blacksmith.sh ) exists and it works pretty well!
Comment linking /
on “Ghostty is leaving GitHub”Submitted Reverse engineering GitHub Actions cache to make it fast as a story · 154 points
HN discussionblacksmith.sh just raised tens of millions on the core premise that self-hosting CI/CD is hard [0]. they've had multiple outages in the last week, so i guess they are proving themselves correct. in practice, giving ssh/sudo to AI (codex) and telling it to setup ephemeral runners on your own host VM, takes about 30 minutes and works extremely well. it bangs out all the shell scripts. moved my own business over to it.…
Comment linking /blog/blacksmith-seed-announcement
on “Incident with Github.com”Submitted Faster Docker builds using a remote BuildKit instance as a story · 75 points
HN discussionthere are a couple and have very good reputation - though I've never used them https://www.blacksmith.sh/ and https://runs-on.com/ They also say that they're much cheaper than github
Comment linking /
on “GitHub Actions down again today”Submitted We built a logging platform for GitHub Actions with ClickHouse as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThis is basically the premise of https://www.blacksmith.sh/ as far as I know, though without the need to host the hardware yourself and the potential complexity they comes with that.
Comment linking /
on “Cloud VM benchmarks 2026: performance/price for 44 VM types over 7 providers”Submitted What it was like going through YC W24 as a story · 10 points
HN discussion> You have 5 days before the new DockerHub limits f*ck you over. How classy from a somewhat DockerHub competitor: https://www.blacksmith.sh/pricing I guess only they are allowed to make money, not Docker.
Comment linking /pricing
on a deleted threadSubmitted You have 5 days before the new DockerHub limits hit you as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stacked Diffs Can Be Expensive: Why You Should Do It More as a story · 9 points
HN discussionSubmitted How Blacksmith runs more than 10M CI jobs a day as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Exodus from GitHub Actions to Buildkite as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted "But YC takes 7% of my company " – Our experience of YC W24 as a story · 8 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why MCP Code Mode Loses Cold, and Wins Warm as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted How we SSH into GitHub Actions as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted What is your CI job talking to? as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to optimize your Dockerfile for faster Docker builds as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted How we built a logging platform for GitHub Actions with ClickHouse as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Economics of Operating a CI Cloud as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Deployments still suck, but maybe they don't have to as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Security at Blacksmith as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stacked Diffs Can Be Expensive: Why You Should Do It More as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Speeding up Docker builds in GitHub Actions has so much low hanging fruit as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
