Freehold — Mzed Studio case study

Runs GitHub Actions jobs on the Macs, Windows PCs, and Linux machines your team already owns.

Overview

Freehold turns machines a team already owns into GitHub Actions runners: install the app, approve a pairing code, and switch the machine on for your repos.

The problem

Hosted macOS and Windows CI minutes cost far more than Linux, and cold builds make them slow. Freehold moves those jobs onto hardware the team already paid for, where caches stay warm.

What we built

• Native host apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux
• Every job runs isolated as its own locked-down user, and Linux jobs on a Mac get their own lightweight VM
• Warm runners pick up jobs in well under a second for Linux
• Build caches served from the machine's own disk, so warm runs skip the download
• Short-lived runner credentials through a GitHub App, with no long-lived tokens on the machine
• Admins approve every machine before it joins a team, with simple per-machine billing

Stack

Swift, Rust, Convex, Next.js 16, Better Auth, Stripe, Cloudflare

Outcome

Live at freehold.run with host apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Industry: CI/CD, Infra

Designed, built, and shipped by Mzed Studio.