GitHub: Actions | Git and GitHub

GitHub Actions is GitHub’s automation system.

For beginners, the most important first use case is understanding automated checks on pull requests.

What Actions do

GitHub Actions can run automated workflows for events such as:

a push
a pull request
a scheduled trigger

Those workflows often run tasks such as:

tests
linting
builds

Where workflow files live

Workflow files usually live in:

.github/workflows/

They are written as YAML files inside that directory.

What a beginner should understand first

At the start, you do not need to memorize workflow syntax.

You do need to understand:

that a workflow file defines automated checks
that GitHub can run those checks when code changes are proposed
that pull requests often show whether those checks passed or failed

A small example

name: CI

on:
  pull_request:

jobs:
  check:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: pnpm install
      - run: pnpm build

That example is enough to see the shape:

a workflow has a name
it runs on an event
it defines jobs
each job has steps