github-actions-docs

A reference for GitHub Actions, GitHub's system for running automated jobs such as tests, builds, and deployments from a repository.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to write, customize, migrate, secure, or troubleshoot workflows, including triggers, jobs, reusable workflows, caches, artifacts, secrets, and deployments.
Why use it?
It provides current, official guidance for workflow syntax and avoids relying on outdated examples or guesses.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/devantler-tech/agent-plugins/github-actions-docs
Any agent
npx skills add devantler-tech/agent-plugins --skill github-actions-docs
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/devantler-tech/agent-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 78 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,112 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 94% copy Near-identical to another mod 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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00078 $0.01112
Opus 5 $0.00039 $0.00556
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00222
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00111

Measured yesterday against content hash a0708d4ad28b, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

github-actions-docs 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 yesterday.

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.

Origin

This is a copy

94% identical to github-actions-docs — 8 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

plugins/github/skills/github-actions-docs/SKILL.md · 103 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 103 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

GitHub Actions questions are easy to answer from stale memory. Use this skill to ground answers in official GitHub documentation and return the closest authoritative page instead of generic CI/CD advice.

When to Use

Use this skill when the request is about:

  • GitHub Actions concepts, terminology, or product boundaries
  • Workflow YAML, triggers, jobs, matrices, concurrency, variables, contexts, or expressions
  • GitHub-hosted runners, larger runners, self-hosted runners, or Actions Runner Controller
  • Artifacts, caches, reusable workflows, workflow templates, or custom actions
  • Secrets, GITHUB_TOKEN, OpenID Connect, artifact attestations, or secure workflow patterns
  • Environments, deployment protection rules, deployment history, or deployment examples
  • Migrating from Jenkins, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, Travis CI, Azure Pipelines, or other CI systems
  • Troubleshooting workflow behavior when the user needs documentation, syntax guidance, or official references

Do not use this skill for:

  • A specific failing PR check, missing workflow log, or CI failure triage. Use gh-fix-ci.
  • General GitHub pull request, branch, or repository operations. Use github.
  • CodeQL-specific configuration or code scanning guidance. Use codeql.
  • Dependabot configuration, grouping, or dependency update strategy. Use dependabot.

Workflow

1. Classify the request

Decide which bucket the question belongs to before searching:

  • Getting started or tutorials
  • Workflow authoring and syntax
  • Runners and execution environment
  • Security and supply chain
  • Deployments and environments
  • Custom actions and publishing
  • Monitoring, logs, and troubleshooting
  • Migration

If you need a quick starting point, load references/topic-map.md and jump to the closest section.

2. Search official GitHub docs first

  • Treat docs.github.com as the source of truth.
  • Prefer pages under https://docs.github.com/en/actions.
  • Search with the user's exact terms plus a focused Actions phrase such as workflow syntax, OIDC, reusable workflows, or self-hosted runners.
  • When multiple pages are plausible, compare 2-3 candidate pages and pick the one that most directly answers the user's question.

Read the full file on GitHub · 103 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file 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.

  1. yesterday First seen · 103 lines · 78 tokens per session scan A a0708d4ad28b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

github-actions-docs is a skill published in the GitHub repository devantler-tech/agent-plugins (2 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 78 tokens to every session and 1,112 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 94% identical to github-actions-docs, differing in 8 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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