Local

At a glance — a self-hosted launcher that spawns each ephemeral runner as a child process on the host. The simplest option; ideal for development or a dedicated host that already has git, bash, and OpenTofu.

Configure

On top of the shared runner-group config (RUNNER_GROUP_ID, BACKEND_URL, RUNNER_PRIVATE_KEY_FILE, …):

Variable	Required	Notes
`EPHEMERAL_RUNNER_EXEC`	Yes	command used to spawn the ephemeral runner
`RUNNER_DATA_DIR`	No	user-writable default if unset

Then start the group:

make run_runner_group

How it behaves

Forwards a narrow env whitelist to children rather than inheriting the full parent environment, so host secrets don’t leak into runs.
Reaping doesn’t apply (no containers/Pods to sweep) — the process exits when the run ends.

Internals

Configuration → Local Launcher and Runner Polling.