github-actions-workflow

SKILL.md

GitHub Actions Workflow

Table of Contents

Overview

When to Use

Quick Start

Reference Guides

Best Practices

Overview

Create powerful GitHub Actions workflows to automate testing, building, security scanning, and deployment processes directly from your GitHub repository.

When to Use

Continuous integration and testing

Build automation

Security scanning and analysis

Dependency updates

Automated deployments

Release management

Code quality checks

Quick Start

Minimal working example:

# .github/workflows/ci.yml
name: CI/CD Pipeline

on:
  push:
    branches: [main, develop]
  pull_request:
    branches: [main, develop]

env:
  REGISTRY: ghcr.io
  IMAGE_NAME: ${{ github.repository }}

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    strategy:
      matrix:
        node-version: [16.x, 18.x, 20.x]
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Setup Node ${{ matrix.node-version }}
        uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
// ... (see reference guides for full implementation)

Reference Guides

Detailed implementations in the references/ directory:

Guide
Contents

Complete CI/CD Workflow
Complete CI/CD Workflow

Automated Release Workflow
Automated Release Workflow

Docker Build and Push
Docker Build and Push

Best Practices

✅ DO

Use caching for dependencies (npm, pip, Maven)

Run tests in parallel with matrix strategy

Require status checks on protected branches

Use environment secrets and variables

Implement conditional jobs with if:

Lint and format before testing

Set explicit permissions with permissions

Use runner labels for specific hardware

Cache Docker layers for faster builds

❌ DON'T

Store secrets in workflow files

Run untrusted code in workflows

Use secrets.* with pull requests from forks

Hardcode credentials or tokens

Miss error handling with continue-on-error

Create overly complex workflows

Skip testing on pull requests

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