I used it to build a zero-cost "dead man's switch" that catches silent failures before I do.
Quick context before anything else: I packaged this exact recipe, plus six more like it, into a small cookbook — The GitHub Actions Cookbook ($10, instant download, PDF + ready-to-fork workflow files). Everything below is the full, real recipe from it, not a watered-down preview. If it's useful to you, the other six are built the same way.
Now, here's the thing almost nobody talks about.
You already have a free cron scheduler. You're just not using it.
If you've ever set up GitHub Actions, it was probably for one job: run the tests, build the thing, ship it on push. That's the entire relationship most developers have with it.
