Github Actions

When to Use This Skill

USE when:

• Building CI/CD pipelines for GitHub repositories
• Automating tests across multiple OS/language versions
• Creating release and deployment workflows
• Publishing packages to npm, PyPI, Docker Hub
• Automating issue triage and PR management
• Scheduling periodic maintenance tasks
• Building reusable workflow components
• Implementing GitOps deployment patterns

DON'T USE when:

• Repository not hosted on GitHub (use Jenkins, GitLab CI)
• Need complex DAG-based workflow orchestration (use Airflow)
• Require visual workflow design (use n8n, Activepieces)
• Self-hosted runners not available for compute-intensive tasks
• Need real-time event processing (use dedicated message queues)

Prerequisites

GitHub Repository Setup

# Create workflow directory
mkdir -p .github/workflows

# Verify GitHub CLI installed
gh --version

# Authenticate with GitHub
gh auth login

# Check workflow permissions
gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/actions/permissions

Local Testing with act

# Install act for local workflow testing
# macOS
brew install act

# Linux
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nektos/act/master/install.sh | sudo bash

# Verify installation
act --version

*See sub-skills for full details.*
### Workflow Linting

```bash
# Install actionlint
brew install actionlint   # macOS
go install github.com/rhysd/actionlint/cmd/actionlint@latest  # Go

# Lint workflows
actionlint .github/workflows/*.yml

# YAML validation
pip install yamllint
yamllint .github/workflows/

Version History

Version	Date	Changes
1.0.0	2026-01-17	Initial release with comprehensive CI/CD patterns

Resources

• GitHub Actions Documentation
• Workflow Syntax Reference
• GitHub Actions Marketplace
• act - Local Testing
• actionlint - Workflow Linter

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This skill provides production-ready patterns for GitHub Actions workflows, tested across multiple repositories and CI/CD pipelines.

Sub-Skills

• 1. Basic Workflow Structure
• 2. Matrix Builds for Cross-Platform Testing
• 3. Caching Strategies (+1)
• Integration with Slack Notifications (+1)
• 1. Security Best Practices (+3)
• Common Issues (+1)

Sub-Skills

• What's Changed
• 5. Reusable Workflows (+5)