diff --git a/.woodpecker/ci.yml b/.woodpecker/ci.yml
index ce4d4da..1789aa8 100644
--- a/.woodpecker/ci.yml
+++ b/.woodpecker/ci.yml
@@ -7,7 +7,14 @@ variables:
   - &enable_pnpm 'corepack enable'
 
 when:
-  - event: [push, pull_request, manual]
+  # PR + manual CI run on any branch — the pull_request pipeline is the merge gate.
+  # push CI is restricted to protected branches (main) so a feature-branch push no
+  # longer fires a redundant SECOND pipeline alongside its PR pipeline. This ~halves
+  # CI load on the storage-constrained runner with zero loss of gating (branch
+  # protection requires no push/ci status context; main still gets full push CI).
+  - event: [pull_request, manual]
+  - event: push
+    branch: main
 
 # Turbo remote cache (turbo.mosaicstack.dev) is configured via Woodpecker
 # repository-level environment variables (TURBO_API, TURBO_TEAM, TURBO_TOKEN).