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CI/CD Pipelines

A practitioner's guide to continuous integration and continuous delivery for production systems. This skill covers pipeline design, GitHub Actions workflows, deployment strategies, and the operational patterns that keep software shipping safely at speed. The emphasis is on when to apply each pattern and why it matters, not just the YAML syntax.

CI/CD is not a tool configuration problem - it is a software delivery discipline. The pipeline is the product team's contract with production: every commit that passes is a candidate release, and the pipeline enforces that contract automatically.

When to use this skill

Trigger this skill when the user:

Creates or modifies a GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins pipeline
Implements PR checks, branch protection rules, or required status checks
Sets up deployment environments (staging, production) with promotion gates
Implements blue-green, canary, rolling, or recreate deployment strategies
Configures caching for dependencies or build artifacts to speed up pipelines
Sets up matrix builds to test across multiple Node versions or operating systems
Automates secrets injection, environment promotion, or rollback procedures
Diagnoses a slow pipeline and needs to find what to parallelize or cache

Do NOT trigger this skill for:

Infrastructure provisioning from scratch (use a Terraform/Kubernetes skill instead)
Application-level testing strategies unrelated to pipeline structure

Key principles

Fail fast - The pipeline should surface errors as early as possible. Run linting and type-checking before tests. Run unit tests before integration tests. A 30-second lint failure beats a 10-minute test run that tells you the same thing.
Cache aggressively -
```
node_modules
```
, Maven
```
.m2
```
, pip wheels, and Docker layer caches can turn a 12-minute pipeline into a 3-minute one. Cache by the lockfile hash so the cache busts exactly when dependencies change.
Keep pipelines under 10 minutes - Pipelines longer than 10 minutes cause developers to stop watching them, batch commits to avoid waiting, and skip running them locally. Parallelize jobs, split slow test suites, and move heavy analysis to scheduled runs.
Trunk-based development - Short-lived branches merged frequently (at least daily) are the prerequisite for effective CI. Long-lived branches turn CI into a lie - the code integrates in CI but not in reality.
Immutable artifacts - Build once, deploy everywhere. The same Docker image or archive that passed staging must be the thing that goes to production. Never rebuild from source at deploy time.

Core concepts

Pipeline stages run in order and each must pass before the next begins:

build -> test -> deploy:staging -> approve -> deploy:production

Triggers determine when a pipeline runs:

```
push
```
on any branch - run build and test
```
pull_request
```
- run full check suite for the PR
```
schedule
```
(cron) - run security scans or long test suites nightly
```
workflow_dispatch
```
- manual trigger with optional inputs for on-demand deploys

Environments are named targets (staging, production) with their own secrets, protection rules, and deployment history. GitHub Environments let you require manual approvals before promoting to production.

Secrets management - secrets live in GitHub Secrets or an external vault (Vault, AWS Secrets Manager). They are injected as environment variables at runtime. Never print them in logs. Rotate them on a schedule.

Artifact storage - build outputs (compiled code, Docker images, test reports) are stored in GitHub Artifacts or a registry (GHCR, ECR, Docker Hub). Artifacts have a retention window; images are tagged with the commit SHA.

Common tasks

Set up GitHub Actions for Node.js

A standard Node.js pipeline with lint, test, and build, using dependency caching:

yaml

# .github/workflows/ci.yml
name: CI

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:

jobs:
  ci:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
          cache: npm            # caches ~/.npm by package-lock.json hash

      - run: npm ci             # clean install from lockfile

      - run: npm run lint

      - run: npm test -- --coverage

      - run: npm run build

      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: dist
          path: dist/
          retention-days: 7

Use
npm ci
instead of
npm install
in CI. It is faster, deterministic, and will fail if
package-lock.json
is out of sync with
package.json
.

Implement PR checks

Require the CI workflow to pass before merging. Configure in GitHub Settings > Branches > Branch protection rules:

Enable "Require status checks to pass before merging"
Add the job name (
```
ci
```
) as a required check
Enable "Require branches to be up to date before merging"

yaml

# .github/workflows/pr-check.yml
name: PR Check

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened]

jobs:
  lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
          cache: npm
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run lint

  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    needs: lint           # only run tests if lint passes
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
          cache: npm
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test

  typecheck:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 20
          cache: npm
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm run typecheck

Set up deployment environments with approvals

Use GitHub Environments to gate production deploys behind a manual approval:

yaml

# .github/workflows/deploy.yml
name: Deploy

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    outputs:
      image-tag: ${{ steps.tag.outputs.tag }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - id: tag
        run: echo "tag=${{ github.sha }}" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
      - run: docker build -t myapp:${{ github.sha }} .
      - run: docker push ghcr.io/org/myapp:${{ github.sha }}
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

  deploy-staging:
    needs: build
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment: staging        # uses staging secrets + URL
    steps:
      - run: ./scripts/deploy.sh
        env:
          IMAGE_TAG: ${{ needs.build.outputs.image-tag }}
          DEPLOY_URL: ${{ vars.DEPLOY_URL }}
          API_KEY: ${{ secrets.DEPLOY_API_KEY }}

  deploy-production:
    needs: deploy-staging
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment: production     # requires manual approval in GitHub UI
    steps:
      - run: ./scripts/deploy.sh
        env:
          IMAGE_TAG: ${{ needs.build.outputs.image-tag }}
          DEPLOY_URL: ${{ vars.DEPLOY_URL }}
          API_KEY: ${{ secrets.DEPLOY_API_KEY }}

Configure environment protection rules in GitHub Settings > Environments > production > Required reviewers.

Implement blue-green deployment

Route traffic between two identical environments. Switch instantly; roll back by switching back:

yaml

  deploy-blue-green:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment: production
    env:
      IMAGE_TAG: ${{ needs.build.outputs.image-tag }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Determine inactive slot
        id: slot
        run: |
          ACTIVE=$(curl -s https://api.example.com/active-slot)
          if [ "$ACTIVE" = "blue" ]; then
            echo "target=green" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
          else
            echo "target=blue" >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT
          fi

      - name: Deploy to inactive slot
        run: ./scripts/deploy-slot.sh ${{ steps.slot.outputs.target }} $IMAGE_TAG

      - name: Run smoke tests against inactive slot
        run: ./scripts/smoke-test.sh ${{ steps.slot.outputs.target }}

      - name: Switch traffic to new slot
        run: ./scripts/switch-slot.sh ${{ steps.slot.outputs.target }}

      - name: Verify production is healthy
        run: ./scripts/health-check.sh production

      - name: Roll back on failure
        if: failure()
        run: ./scripts/switch-slot.sh ${{ steps.slot.outputs.target == 'blue' && 'green' || 'blue' }}

See
references/deployment-strategies.md
for a detailed comparison of blue-green vs canary vs rolling vs recreate.

Implement canary release with rollback

Route a small percentage of traffic to the new version before full rollout:

yaml

  deploy-canary:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    environment: production
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Deploy canary (10% traffic)
        run: ./scripts/deploy-canary.sh ${{ env.IMAGE_TAG }} 10

      - name: Monitor canary for 5 minutes
        run: |
          for i in $(seq 1 10); do
            sleep 30
            ERROR_RATE=$(./scripts/get-error-rate.sh canary)
            echo "Canary error rate: $ERROR_RATE%"
            if (( $(echo "$ERROR_RATE > 1.0" | bc -l) )); then
              echo "Error rate too high. Rolling back canary."
              ./scripts/rollback-canary.sh
              exit 1
            fi
          done

      - name: Promote canary to 100%
        run: ./scripts/promote-canary.sh ${{ env.IMAGE_TAG }}

      - name: Roll back on any failure
        if: failure()
        run: ./scripts/rollback-canary.sh

Cache dependencies and build artifacts

Cache

node_modules

by lockfile hash. Always restore-then-save so partial installs don't get cached:

yaml

      - name: Cache node_modules
        id: cache-node-modules
        uses: actions/cache@v4
        with:
          path: node_modules
          key: node-modules-${{ runner.os }}-${{ hashFiles('package-lock.json') }}
          restore-keys: |
            node-modules-${{ runner.os }}-

      - name: Install dependencies
        if: steps.cache-node-modules.outputs.cache-hit != 'true'
        run: npm ci

      - name: Cache Next.js build
        uses: actions/cache@v4
        with:
          path: |
            .next/cache
          key: nextjs-${{ runner.os }}-${{ hashFiles('package-lock.json') }}-${{ hashFiles('**/*.ts', '**/*.tsx') }}
          restore-keys: |
            nextjs-${{ runner.os }}-${{ hashFiles('package-lock.json') }}-
            nextjs-${{ runner.os }}-

Cache keys should go from most-specific to least-specific in
restore-keys
. A partial cache restore is almost always faster than a cold install.

Set up matrix builds

Test across multiple Node versions and operating systems in parallel:

yaml

  test-matrix:
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false        # don't cancel other jobs if one fails
      matrix:
        node-version: [18, 20, 22]
        os: [ubuntu-latest, windows-latest, macos-latest]
        exclude:
          - os: windows-latest
            node-version: 18  # don't test EOL Node on Windows

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: ${{ matrix.node-version }}
          cache: npm
      - run: npm ci
      - run: npm test

Set

fail-fast: false

when the matrix combinations are independent. Use

fail-fast: true

(default) when any failure means the whole build is broken.

Error handling

Failure	Likely cause	Fix
`npm ci` fails with lockfile mismatch	`package.json` updated without re-running `npm install`	Run `npm install` locally and commit the updated `package-lock.json`
Cache miss on every run	Cache key includes volatile data (timestamps, random)	Use only stable inputs in cache key - lockfile hash, OS, Node version
Secrets not available in fork PR	GitHub does not expose secrets to workflows triggered by fork PRs	Use `pull_request_target` with caution, or require manual approval for external PRs
Workflow hangs with no output	Long-running process with no stdout, or missing `--ci` flag on test runner	Add `timeout-minutes` to the job; pass `--ci` flag to jest/vitest
Deploy fails but staging passed	Environment-specific secrets or config missing in production environment	Verify all `vars` and `secrets` are configured in the production environment settings
Matrix job passes on one OS but fails another	Path separators, line endings, or OS-specific tools diverge	Use `path.join()` in code; add `.gitattributes` for line endings; pin tool versions

References

For detailed implementation guidance on specific deployment strategies:

```
references/deployment-strategies.md
```
- blue-green, canary, rolling, recreate, A/B, and shadow deployments with ASCII diagrams and decision framework

Only load the references file when choosing or implementing a specific deployment strategy - it is detailed and will consume context.

Related skills

When this skill is activated, check if the following companion skills are installed. For any that are missing, mention them to the user and offer to install before proceeding with the task. Example: "I notice you don't have [skill] installed yet - it pairs well with this skill. Want me to install it?"

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Install a companion:

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ci-cd-pipelines

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content

CI/CD Pipelines

When to use this skill

Key principles

Core concepts

Common tasks

Set up GitHub Actions for Node.js

Implement PR checks

Set up deployment environments with approvals

Implement blue-green deployment

Implement canary release with rollback

Cache dependencies and build artifacts

Set up matrix builds

Error handling

References

Related skills