During January 2025, Fernando Horta focused on stabilizing container image pulls in the gitlabhq/gitlab-runner repository by addressing a regression in Docker registry authentication. He updated the regular expression logic in Go to correctly recognize both HTTP and HTTPS registries, ensuring that environments using legacy or private registries could authenticate without failure. This change improved the reliability and compatibility of CI/CD pipelines by reducing build interruptions related to registry authentication. Fernando applied his expertise in Docker, registry authentication, and regular expressions to deliver a targeted fix, demonstrating careful debugging and incremental improvement in a critical area of the authentication flow.