---
name: ci-cd-and-automation
description: Automates CI/CD pipeline setup. Use when setting up or modifying build and deployment pipelines. Use when you need to automate quality gates, configure test runners in CI, or establish deployment strategies.
---
# CI/CD and Automation
## Overview
Automate quality gates so that no change reaches production without passing tests, lint, type checking, and build. CI/CD is the enforcement mechanism for every other skill — it catches what humans and agents miss, and it does so consistently on every single change.
**Shift Left:** Catch problems as early in the pipeline as possible. A bug caught in linting costs minutes; the same bug caught in production costs hours. Move checks upstream — static analysis before tests, tests before staging, staging before production.
**Faster is Safer:** Smaller batches and more frequent releases reduce risk, not increase it. A deployment with 3 changes is easier to debug than one with 30. Frequent releases build confidence in the release process itself.
## When to Use
- Setting up a new project's CI pipeline
- Adding or modifying automated checks
- Configuring deployment pipelines
- When a change should trigger automated verification
- Debugging CI failures
## The Quality Gate Pipeline
Every change goes through these gates before merge:
```
Pull Request Opened
│
▼
┌─────────────────┐
│ LINT CHECK │ eslint, prettier
│ ↓ pass │
│ TYPE CHECK │ tsc --noEmit
│ ↓ pass │
│ UNIT TESTS │ jest/vitest
│ ↓ pass │
│ BUILD │ npm run build
│ ↓ pass │
│ INTEGRATION │ API/DB tests
│ ↓ pass │
│ E2E (optional) │ Playwright/Cypress
│ ↓ pass │
│ SECURITY AUDIT │ npm audit
│ ↓ pass │
│ BUNDLE SIZE │ bundlesize check
└─────────────────┘
│
▼
Ready for review
```
**No gate can be skipped.** If lint fails, fix lint — don't disable the rule. If a test fails, fix the code — don't skip the test.
## GitHub Actions Configuration
### Basic CI Pipeline
```yaml
# .github/workflows/ci.yml
name: CI
on:
pull_request:
branches: [main]
push:
branches: [main]
jobs:
quality:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- uses: actions/setup-node@v4
with:
node-version: '22'
cache: 'npm'
- name: Install dependencies
run: npm ci
- name: Lint
run: npm run lint
- name: Type check
run: npx tsc --noEmit
- name: Test
run: npm test -- --coverage
- name: Build
run: npm run build
- name: Security audit
run: npm audit --audit-level=high
```
### With Database Integration Tests
```yaml
integration:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
services:
postgres:
image: postgres:16
env:
POSTGRES_DB: testdb
POSTGRES_USER: ci_user
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${{ secrets.CI_DB_PASSWORD }}
ports:
- 5432:5432
options: >-
--health-cmd pg_isready
--health-interval 10s
--health-timeout 5s
--health-retries 5
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- uses: actions/setup-node@v4
with:
node-version: '22'
cache: 'npm'
- run: npm ci
- name: Run migrations
run: npx prisma migrate deploy
env:
DATABASE_URL: postgresql://ci_user:${{ secrets.CI_DB_PASSWORD }}@localhost:5432/testdb
- name: Integration tests
run: npm run test:integration
env:
DATABASE_URL: postgresql://ci_user:${{ secrets.CI_DB_PASSWORD }}@localhost:5432/testdb
```
> **Note:** Even for CI-only test databases, use GitHub Secrets for credentials rather than hardcoding values. This builds good habits and prevents accidental reuse of test credentials in other contexts.
### E2E Tests
```yaml
e2e:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- uses: actions/setup-node@v4
with:
node-version: '22'
cache: 'npm'
- run: npm ci
- name: Install Playwright
run: npx playwright install --with-deps chromium
- name: Build
run: npm run build
- name: Run E2E tests
run: npx playwright test
- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
if: failure()
with:
name: playwright-report
path: playwright-report/
```
## Feeding CI Failures Back to Agents
The power of CI with AI agents is the feedback loop. When CI fails:
```
CI fails
│
▼
Copy the failure output
│
▼
Feed it to the agent:
"The CI pipeline failed with this error:
[paste specific error]
Fix the issue and verify locally before pushing again."
│
▼
Agent fixes → pushes → CI runs again
```
**Key patterns:**
```
Lint failure → Agent runs `npm run lint --fix` and commits
Type error → Agent reads the error location and fixes the type
Test failure → Agent follows debugging-and-error-recovery skill
Build error → Agent checks config and dependencies
```
## Deployment Strategies
### Preview Deployments
Every PR gets a preview deployment for manual testing:
```yaml
# Deploy preview on PR (Vercel/Netlify/etc.)
deploy-preview:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
if: github.event_name == 'pull_request'
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- name: Deploy preview
run: npx vercel --token=${{ secrets.VERCEL_TOKEN }}
```
### Feature Flags
Feature flags decouple deployment from release. Deploy incomplete or risky features behind flags so you can:
- **Ship code without enabling it.** Merge to main early, enable when ready.
- **Roll back without redeploying.** Disable the flag instead of reverting code.
- **Canary new features.** Enable for 1% of users, then 10%, then 100%.
- **Run A/B tests.** Compare behavior with and without the feature.
```typescript
// Simple feature flag pattern
if (featureFlags.isEnabled('new-checkout-flow', { userId })) {
return renderNewCheckout();
}
return renderLegacyCheckout();
```
**Flag lifecycle:** Create → Enable for testing → Canary → Full rollout → Remove the flag and dead code. Flags that live forever become technical debt — set a cleanup date when you create them.
### Staged Rollouts
```
PR merged to main
│
▼
Staging deployment (auto)
│ Manual verification
▼
Production deployment (manual trigger or auto after staging)
│
▼
Monitor for errors (15-minute window)
│
├── Errors detected → Rollback
└── Clean → Done
```
### Rollback Plan
Every deployment should be reversible:
```yaml
# Manual rollback workflow
name: Rollback
on:
workflow_dispatch:
inputs:
version:
description: 'Version to rollback to'
required: true
jobs:
rollback:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Rollback deployment
run: |
# Deploy the specified previous version
npx vercel rollback ${{ inputs.version }}
```
## Environment Management
```
.env.example → Committed (template for developers)
.env → NOT committed (local development)
.env.test → Committed (test environment, no real secrets)
CI secrets → Stored in GitHub Secrets / vault
Production secrets → Stored in deployment platform / vault
```
CI should never have production secrets. Use separate secrets for CI testing.
## Automation Beyond CI
### Dependabot / Renovate
```yaml
# .github/dependabot.yml
version: 2
updates:
- package-ecosystem: npm
directory: /
schedule:
interval: weekly
open-pull-requests-limit: 5
```
### Build Cop Role
Designate someone responsible for keeping CI green. When the build breaks, the Build Cop's job is to fix or revert — not the person whose change caused the break. This prevents broken builds from accumulating while everyone assumes someone else will fix it.
### PR Checks
- **Required reviews:** At least 1 approval before merge
- **Required status checks:** CI must pass before merge
- **Branch protection:** No force-pushes to main
- **Auto-merge:** If all checks pass and approved, merge automatically
## CI Optimization
When the pipeline exceeds 10 minutes, apply these strategies in order of impact:
```
Slow CI pipeline?
├── Cache dependencies
│ └── Use actions/cache or setup-node cache option for node_modules
├── Run jobs in parallel
│ └── Split lint, typecheck, test, build into separate parallel jobs
├── Only run what changed
│ └── Use path filters to skip unrelated jobs (e.g., skip e2e for docs-only PRs)
├── Use matrix builds
│ └── Shard test suites across multiple runners
├── Optimize the test suite
│ └── Remove slow tests from the critical path, run them on a schedule instead
└── Use larger runners
└── GitHub-hosted larger runners or self-hosted for CPU-heavy builds
```
**Example: caching and parallelism**
```yaml
jobs:
lint:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- uses: actions/setup-node@v4
with: { node-version: '22', cache: 'npm' }
- run: npm ci
- run: npm run lint
typecheck:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- uses: actions/setup-node@v4
with: { node-version: '22', cache: 'npm' }
- run: npm ci
- run: npx tsc --noEmit
test:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v4
- uses: actions/setup-node@v4
with: { node-version: '22', cache: 'npm' }
- run: npm ci
- run: npm test -- --coverage
```
## Common Rationalizations
| Rationalization | Reality |
|---|---|
| "CI is too slow" | Optimize the pipeline (see CI Optimization below), don't skip it. A 5-minute pipeline prevents hours of debugging. |
| "This change is trivial, skip CI" | Trivial changes break builds. CI is fast for trivial changes anyway. |
| "The test is flaky, just re-run" | Flaky tests mask real bugs and waste everyone's time. Fix the flakiness. |
| "We'll add CI later" | Projects without CI accumulate broken states. Set it up on day one. |
| "Manual testing is enough" | Manual testing doesn't scale and isn't repeatable. Automate what you can. |
## Red Flags
- No CI pipeline in the project
- CI failures ignored or silenced
- Tests disabled in CI to make the pipeline pass
- Production deploys without staging verification
- No rollback mechanism
- Secrets stored in code or CI config files (not secrets manager)
- Long CI times with no optimization effort
## Verification
After setting up or modifying CI:
- [ ] All quality gates are present (lint, types, tests, build, audit)
- [ ] Pipeline runs on every PR and push to main
- [ ] Failures block merge (branch protection configured)
- [ ] CI results feed back into the development loop
- [ ] Secrets are stored in the secrets manager, not in code
- [ ] Deployment has a rollback mechanism
- [ ] Pipeline runs in under 10 minutes for the test suite