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Audit GitHub Actions workflow efficiency and recommend fixes to reduce CI minutes and costs.
Based on SOC occupation classification
| name | github-actions-efficiency |
| description | Audit GitHub Actions workflow efficiency and recommend fixes to reduce CI minutes and costs. |
Use this skill as a lean entrypoint for GitHub Actions efficiency work. Inspect the repo, identify the waste source, and load only the reference material needed for the current task.
If no workflows exist yet, load references/actions.md and define a baseline before proceeding with the steps below.
If shell or gh CLI access is unavailable: ask the user to paste .github/workflows/ contents and gh run list --limit 10 output. If only partial files are provided, note it: "Audit based on provided files only; some insights may be incomplete." Begin responses from files alone with: "Static-only analysis (not confirmed with live runs)."
.github/workflows/ or explicit GitHub Actions configuration questions.references/actions.md — audits, job gating, matrix reduction, live validation, and workflow-specific fixes.references/reporting.md — when the user asks for a before/after efficiency report.references/patterns.md — full YAML examples when inline audit commands are not enough.rg -n "on:|concurrency:|paths:|paths-ignore:|strategy:|matrix:|cache:" .github/workflows
gh run list --limit 10
run_id=$(gh run list --limit 1 --json databaseId --jq '.[0].databaseId')
gh run view "$run_id" --log-failed
Look for: missing dependency caches, missing concurrency cancellation, over-broad triggers, duplicate workflow coverage, and expensive jobs that run on every change regardless of scope.
Check each proposed fix against these rules before recommending it:
From the six candidates below, keep only those supported by audit evidence from step 1 and passing all guardrails from step 2. Rank survivors by estimated daily CI minutes saved (per-run savings × runs per day). Select all candidates that meet both criteria, up to a maximum of 3.
concurrency cancellationgh CLI access is available, validate path-gating and concurrency cancellation with a live test push on a non-protected branch.references/actions.mdreferences/reporting.mdreferences/patterns.mdreferences/review-rubric.md — load when reviewing completed efficiency workExpert on the history, origin, and correct use of the em dash. Use when writing or reviewing code, comments, or data files to avoid em and en dashes, defaulting to never using them and replacing any found with a hyphen (-). Includes strong knowledge of punctuation marks and the proper usage of punctuation characters when writing comments.
Use when an outage, production incident, or significant service degradation has occurred and the team needs to write a structured blameless post-mortem. Triggers on phrases like "write a post-mortem", "incident review", "what went wrong", "outage report", "root cause analysis", or "RCA". Covers timeline reconstruction, contributing factor analysis, impact quantification, and action item generation with owners.
Create, set up, or update the personal context portfolio: structured markdown files describing who you are, how you work, your teams, and your tool/ADO configuration. Runs the interview workflow for first-time setup and targeted edits for updates. Trigger this skill when the user asks to: set up their context, create or update their context portfolio, "create my IQ", "set up my IQ", edit their profile, add/remove a stakeholder, update ADO config, change team info, update pillars, or set up any plugin configuration. Trigger when another skill fails to find context (missing files or TODO markers) and needs context populated. Also trigger when the user mentions a context change in passing (e.g., "my manager changed", "we added someone to the team") to offer a context file update. Do NOT trigger for read-only questions like "who's on my team?" or "what's my ADO config?". Those are answered directly from the context files referenced in the loaded custom instructions; no skill is needed.
Adopt repository-level harness engineering for coding agents. Use when a user wants to prevent repeated AI coding-agent mistakes by turning failures into durable instructions, drift checks, regression tests, failure memory, and adoption reports tailored to the target repository.
Security hardening reviewer for GitHub Actions workflow files (.github/workflows/*.yml). Reasons about the Actions threat model that pattern matchers and general code linters miss — untrusted-input script injection, privileged triggers running fork code, mutable action references, and over-scoped tokens. Use this skill when asked to review, audit, harden, or secure a GitHub Actions workflow, when writing a new workflow, or for any request like "is this workflow safe?", "review my CI for security issues", "why is pull_request_target dangerous here?", "pin my actions", or "lock down GITHUB_TOKEN permissions". Covers script injection via ${{ }} interpolation, pull_request_target / workflow_run privilege escalation, SHA-pinning of third-party actions, least-privilege permissions, GITHUB_ENV/GITHUB_OUTPUT injection, secret exposure, OIDC over long-lived credentials, and self-hosted runner exposure on public repositories.
Build GitHub Copilot workflows with Xquik X API SDKs, REST endpoints, MCP tools, signed webhooks, tweet search, user lookup, follower exports, media actions, and agent automation.