What is github-actions-workflow?

A guide to setting up GitHub Actions, GitHub's system for running automated jobs when code changes. It covers workflows made of jobs and steps for testing, building, security checks, and deployment.

Use it to create GitHub Actions files for CI/CD, automated tests, security scanning, dependency updates, code-quality checks, deployments, and release tasks.

It helps replace repeated manual checks and releases with a defined process that runs from the repository. It also keeps testing and other checks consistent across changes.

github-actions-workflow — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by aj-geddes

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add aj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts --skill github-actions-workflow

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/aj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts/github-actions-workflow/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/aj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts/github-actions-workflow)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts/github-actions-workflow"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts/github-actions-workflow/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/aj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts/github-actions-workflow"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/aj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts/github-actions-workflow.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 33 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 559 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits

Socket pass 15 Sept 2026
Snyk pass 15 Sept 2026

How audits are shown

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00033	$0.00559
Opus 5.5	$0.00013	$0.00224
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00007	$0.00112
Haiku 4.5	$0.00003	$0.00056

Measured 2mo ago against content hash e0403bbde044, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

github-actions-workflow scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/validate-pipeline.sh), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/github-actions-workflow/SKILL.md · 98 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 98 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

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

Read the full file on GitHub · 98 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 98 lines · 33 tokens per session scan A e0403bbde044

Subscribe to this mod's changes

github-actions-workflow is a skill published in the GitHub repository aj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts (376 stars, last pushed 8mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 33 tokens to every session and 559 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.

CI and CD DevOps and cloud

github-actions-workflow next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
github-actions-workflowaj-geddes/useful-ai-prompts	Skill	376	8mo ago	MIT	A	33	Claude Code, Codex
chinese-git-workflowjnMetaCode/superpowers-zh	Skill	8.5k	11d ago	MIT	A	69	Claude Code
atmos-profilescloudposse/atmos	Skill	1.4k	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	35	Claude Code
webhook-managementhoangsonww/Claude-Code-Agent-Monitor	Skill	1.1k	yesterday	MIT	A	56	Claude Code, Codex
monorepo-managementwshobson/agents	Skill	42k	yesterday	MIT	C	54	Claude Code
managing-github-actions-secretsPostHog/posthog-foss	Skill	728	yesterday	MIT	A	67	Claude Code, Codex
postman-newman-automationLambdaTest/agent-skills	Skill	390	yesterday	MIT	A	156	Claude Code, Codex

github-actions-workflow