CI/CD Nirvana: 7 GitHub Actions Tricks No One Tells You About

Yajur

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4 days ago

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Let’s admit it — GitHub Actions feels magical the first time you set it up.
You push code, and boom: tests run, artifacts build, things deploy.

You feel like an automation god.

Until…
One day, your pipeline randomly deploys because someone fixed a typo.
Or it runs five times because your teammate force-pushed like a maniac.
Or worse — it silently skips a job and nobody notices until prod is on fire.

That’s when the magic dies.
And the real CI journey begins.

This isn’t another tutorial on writing .yml.
This is what actually makes GitHub Actions usable — after it’s broken enough to piss you off.

Here’s what I’ve learned — the hard way — so you don’t have to.

🚦 1. A README Change Shouldn’t Deploy to Production

What went wrong:
We once had a PR where someone fixed a spelling mistake in the README.
That minor change triggered a full-blown CI/CD pipeline — test → build → deploy.
Why? Because GitHub Actions treats every push like it’s equally important.