ai-workbench-cicd

name

ai-workbench-cicd

description

Use this skill to create, debug, or improve GitHub Actions workflows and CI/CD pipelines. Triggers include: 'write a GitHub Actions workflow', 'CI/CD', 'fix this workflow', 'add a build step', 'deployment pipeline', 'GitHub Actions', '.github/workflows', 'release process', 'staging environment', 'automated deploy', 'workflow is failing', or any request to automate builds, tests, or deployments via GitHub. Do NOT use for PowerShell automation outside pipelines — use ai-workbench-powershell for that.

AI Workbench CI/CD

GitHub Actions authoring, pipeline debugging, and release workflow design. This skill writes and fixes CI/CD workflows — from basic build pipelines to multi-environment deployments.

When to invoke

Use this skill when you need to:

• Create a GitHub Actions workflow from scratch
• Debug a failing workflow run
• Add a step to an existing pipeline (tests, linting, deployment)
• Design a release process with staging and production environments
• Understand why a workflow is slow or flaky

What it does

1. Workflow authoring — writes complete, production-ready .github/workflows/*.yml files
2. Debugging — reads workflow run logs and identifies the failure cause; fixes the YAML
3. Pipeline design — recommends job structure, caching strategy, and parallelism for a given project type
4. Release workflow — builds multi-stage pipelines with staging gates, approval steps, and rollback paths
5. Secret management — uses ${{ secrets.* }} correctly; never puts credentials in workflow YAML

Key behaviors

• Minimal permissions — uses permissions: blocks to restrict to least-privilege
• Cache-aware — adds appropriate actions/cache steps for dependencies (npm, pip, nuget, etc.)
• Flakiness-resistant — avoids sleep-based waits; uses proper condition checks and retry patterns
• Version-pinned — pins action versions to commit SHAs for security, not @main or floating tags
• Logs cleanly — adds ::group:: markers to organize workflow output

Output formats

• Complete .github/workflows/ YAML file
• Step addition patch with explanation
• Workflow run failure diagnosis
• Release pipeline design document

Scope

This skill covers GitHub Actions and CI/CD pipelines. For PowerShell automation outside pipelines, use AI Workbench PowerShell. For security scanning setup, use AI Workbench Security.