GitHub Actions Workflow Cheat Sheet — CI/CD Pipeline Syntax
Ready-to-use workflow triggers (push, pull_request, schedule), matrix build strategies, secrets injection, caching, and deployment steps.
Workflow Triggers & Structure
on:
push:
branches: [main]
pull_request:
branches: [main]
Trigger pipeline automatically on commit push or PR against main branch
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
Define execution job running inside standard Linux VM container
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
Official action to clone your repository into the runner workspace
- uses: actions/setup-node@v4
with:
node-version: 20
cache: "npm"
Install Node.js 20 runtime and automatically cache ~/.npm dependencies
Environment & Secrets
env:
API_KEY: ${{ secrets.PROD_API_KEY }}
Securely inject repository secret into environment variable
strategy:
matrix:
node-version: [18.x, 20.x, 22.x]
Run test suite in parallel across multiple Node.js runtime versions