Organization administrators can now specify the maximum number of organization-billed codespaces that any member of the organization, or collaborator, can create.
By default, without this new policy, if organization members or collaborators are permitted to create codespaces that are billable to your organization, they can create multiple such codespaces. The number of codespaces someone can create is governed by a limit to the total number of codespaces that they can create across all repositories they can access. This limit is set by GitHub. With this new policy you can now control the maximum number of organization owned codespaces someone can create.
When this policy is applied to an organization, members or collaborators who meet or exceed this limit will be unable to create new codespaces that are billed to the organization. In order to create a new organization-billed codespace, they must first delete existing codespaces owned by the organization to get below the specified limit. The maximum codespaces policy does not impact user-billed codespaces, or codespaces created on repositories that are not owned by the organization. The policy must be applied across the entire organization, and cannot target specific repositories.
This policy, especially when combined with the existing retention period and idle timeout policies, provides organization administrators new ways to control cost within their organization, while encouraging best practices around cleaning up codespaces that are no longer in use.
To get started, review the documentation for how to apply a maximum codespaces per user policy within your organization.