> Your CI will pay the time penalty during git clone instead of npm ci.
Things like GitLab's CI runners will do a single clone then do `fetch`, `checkout`, and `clean` to checkout your repo. Git repo size isn't a huge bottleneck in CI performance.
Only if you have long-living runners: if you use a dynamic fleet to save money, then almost every time you clone the repo. However, this is why you can do sparse checkouts and limit the git depth.
Things like GitLab's CI runners will do a single clone then do `fetch`, `checkout`, and `clean` to checkout your repo. Git repo size isn't a huge bottleneck in CI performance.