github-actions-author

github-actions-author is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from mthines/agent-skills. It costs 220 tokens per session (4,484 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A tool for creating or reviewing GitHub Actions workflows, which are automated jobs that build, test, and deploy code on GitHub. It checks workflow speed, cost, reuse, and security practices.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to generate or audit workflow YAML, add caching and parallel jobs, share reusable workflows, and ensure test and command output appears in the run log.
Why use it?
It helps avoid slow workflows, hidden failure output, unsafe permissions, unpinned dependencies, and duplicated job definitions.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Part of the mthines-agent-skills plugin — 48 skills, 5 agents shipped together

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/mthines/agent-skills/github-actions-author
Any agent
npx skills add mthines/agent-skills --skill github-actions-author
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/mthines/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Or install mthines-agent-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 48 skills, 5 agents.

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.

agentmods badge for github-actions-author

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mthines/agent-skills/github-actions-author.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mthines/agent-skills/github-actions-author)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mthines/agent-skills/github-actions-author"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mthines/agent-skills/github-actions-author.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 220 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 4,484 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00220 $0.04484
Opus 5 $0.00110 $0.02242
Sonnet 5 $0.00044 $0.00897
Haiku 4.5 $0.00022 $0.00448

Measured 3d ago against content hash f34aab8cb36b, 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-author 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 3d ago.

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/delivery/github-actions-author/SKILL.md · 354 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 354 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

GitHub Actions Author

Generate or audit GitHub Actions workflow YAML against 2026 best practices for speed, cost, reusability, and security.

This SKILL.md is a thin index. Detailed rules live in rules/*.md and load on demand. Drop-in starters live in templates/*.md. The decision tree for picking a shape lives in references/decision-tree.md.


Non-negotiable — every step's output reaches the run log

This applies to both modes and outranks every other preference in this skill.

Every command in every scaffolded or reviewed workflow must write its stdout and stderr to the job log. Output that lands only in a file, only in an artifact, only in $GITHUB_STEP_SUMMARY, or in /dev/null is invisible to gh run view <run-id> --log-failed — the only surface /ci-auto-fix, /test-auto-fix, /implement-suggestion, and an on-call human read a failure from. A failing step that printed nothing cannot be diagnosed or fixed by an agent; it can only be escalated.

Minimum bar for every run: block:

- name: Run unit tests
  shell: bash
  run: |
    set -euo pipefail
    npm test 2>&1 | tee test-output.log      # tee, never `> file`

Forbidden outright: > /dev/null, 2>/dev/null, cmd > out.txt 2>&1, --silent, --quiet, -q, a machine-only reporter with no human output, and || true without echoing the captured output and exit code. tee requires set -o pipefail, otherwise the step goes green on a failed command.

Full rule, decision table, examples, and the review-mode grep: rules/log-output-visibility.md — read it in Phase 4 of scaffold and in every review.


Mode Detection

Parse $ARGUMENTS (first token):

Mode Default Trigger
scaffold yes Default. "create", "scaffold", "new workflow", or no token.
review "review", "audit", path to an existing .github/workflows/*.

Read the full file on GitHub · 354 lines

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. 3d ago First seen · 354 lines · 220 tokens per session scan A f34aab8cb36b

Subscribe to this mod's changes

github-actions-author is a skill published in the GitHub repository mthines/agent-skills (12 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 220 tokens to every session and 4,484 once invoked, about $0.0011 per session on Opus 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 2026-08-31.

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