ci-cd-pipeline

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name: CI/CD Pipeline description: Generate and optimize GitHub Actions CI/CD workflows. allowed-tools: Read, Write

CI/CD Pipeline Skill

Create and improve GitHub Actions workflows for reliable, fast, and maintainable CI/CD.

Workflow Syntax

• Use on for triggers: push, pull_request, workflow_dispatch, schedule. Specify branches/tags to avoid unnecessary runs.
• Define jobs with runs-on (ubuntu-latest, windows-latest, macos-latest). Use matrix strategy for multi-version testing.
• Use needs for job dependencies. Parallelize independent jobs to reduce total time.
• Set timeout-minutes to prevent hung jobs from consuming resources.

Caching

• Cache package manager caches: actions/cache for npm, pip, cargo, Maven, etc.
• Use cache-dependency-path for monorepos. Invalidate cache keys when lockfiles change.
• Cache build artifacts between jobs when build and test are split.

Parallel Jobs

• Run lint, unit tests, integration tests, and build in parallel where possible.
• Use job matrices for testing across Node 18/20, Python 3.10/3.11, etc.
• Fail fast with fail-fast: true in matrix when one combination fails and others are unlikely to succeed.

Deployment Strategies

• Use environments (e.g., staging, production) with protection rules and secrets.
• Implement blue-green or canary via separate workflows or manual approval gates.
• Tag releases with actions/create-release and actions/upload-artifact for binaries.
• Use workflow_run or repository_dispatch for deployment pipelines triggered by successful builds.

Output

Produce valid .yml workflow files under .github/workflows/. Include comments for key decisions and document required secrets and environment variables.