diff --git a/.gitea/workflows/ci.yaml b/.gitea/workflows/ci.yaml
index 651d849..7c71781 100644
--- a/.gitea/workflows/ci.yaml
+++ b/.gitea/workflows/ci.yaml
@@ -44,10 +44,24 @@ jobs:
         run: |
           sudo apt-get update -y
           sudo apt-get install -y cmake gcc moreutils
+      # --parallel 2 rather than a bare --parallel, and that bound is measured
+      # rather than cautious. All five jobs in this file say runs-on:
+      # ubuntu-latest and land on the same runner, so a bare --parallel asks for
+      # nproc compilers *per job* and the runner is handed five times that at
+      # once. Run #30 never showed it because akgl_build and coverage were still
+      # dying early; run #31 was the first push on which all five did real work
+      # simultaneously, and the sanitizers job went from a 55-second link phase
+      # to a 14-minute one -- individual `Linking C executable` steps taking two
+      # minutes each, starting at the exact second akgl_build began its SDL tree
+      # -- before the runner's Docker daemon fell over outright and took the job
+      # with it. That is memory exhaustion, and the only lever on it is the
+      # number of concurrent compiler and linker processes. Applied at all four
+      # build sites for the same reason; mutation_test drives its own builds
+      # through the harness and is not bounded here.
       - name: build
         run: |
           cmake -S . -B build
-          cmake --build build --parallel
+          cmake --build build --parallel 2
       # The suite is 78 cases: 41 golden files byte-compared against the Go
       # reference's own corpus (checked in at tests/reference/, see its README),
       # 9 local golden cases for verbs the reference never implemented, 25 unit
@@ -98,7 +112,7 @@ jobs:
           cmake -S . -B build-asan \
             -DAKBASIC_SANITIZE=ON \
             -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
-          cmake --build build-asan --parallel
+          cmake --build build-asan --parallel 2
           ctest --test-dir build-asan --output-on-failure
       - run: echo "🍏 This job's status is ${{ job.status }}."
 
@@ -138,7 +152,7 @@ jobs:
           cmake -S . -B build-coverage \
             -DAKBASIC_COVERAGE=ON \
             -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug
-          cmake --build build-coverage --parallel
+          cmake --build build-coverage --parallel 2
           ctest --test-dir build-coverage --output-on-failure
           mkdir -p build-coverage/coverage
           gcovr --root . --filter 'src/.*' \
@@ -254,7 +268,7 @@ jobs:
       - name: build with libakgl
         run: |
           cmake -S . -B build-akgl -DAKBASIC_WITH_AKGL=ON
-          cmake --build build-akgl --parallel
+          cmake --build build-akgl --parallel 2
       # Dummy video and audio drivers, set per test by CMakeLists rather than in
       # this job's environment, because an AKGL build of `basic` is now an SDL
       # program and the golden cases run *it*: forty-one real windows is not what