github-workflow-automation

GitHub Workflow Automation Skill

Manage and monitor GitHub Actions workflows directly from the command line using the GitHub CLI (gh).

Quick Start

1. View and Run Workflows

# List all workflows in the repository
gh workflow list

# Run a specific workflow
gh workflow run "CI Pipeline" --ref main

# Run a workflow with inputs
gh workflow run deploy.yml -f environment=production -f debug=true

2. Monitor Workflow Runs

# List recent workflow runs
gh run list --limit 10

# Watch a run in progress (interactive)
gh run watch

# View logs for a specific run (or the last one)
gh run view --log

Core Capabilities

1. Analyzing Failures

Quickly find out why a CI job failed.

# Get the status of the latest run
gh run list --status failure --limit 1

# View the failed job logs
gh run view <run-id> --log-failed

2. Secret and Variable Management

# Set a repository secret for Actions
gh secret set API_TOKEN --body "your-token-here"

# Set an environment secret
gh secret set DB_PASSWORD --env production --body "secure-password"

# List variables
gh variable list

3. Creating New Workflows

When generating new workflows, adhere to these best practices:

• Use actions/checkout@v4 and actions/setup-node@v4 (or current latest versions).
• Define clear triggers (on: push, on: pull_request, on: workflow_dispatch).
• Use concurrency groups to cancel redundant runs:

  concurrency:
    group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
    cancel-in-progress: true