GitHub Actions Learning Lab

A hands-on, progressive learning lab for mastering GitHub Actions CI/CD. Build a real pipeline from scratch -- starting with "Hello World" and ending with a production release workflow with deployment approvals and AI-powered code review.

What Is This?

This is a self-paced curriculum for learning GitHub Actions by doing. Instead of reading documentation in the abstract, you work through 11 chapters that progressively build a complete CI/CD pipeline using a real Node.js application, a real GitHub repository, and real running workflows.

Each chapter introduces new concepts, explains why they exist (not just how to use them), and gives you step-by-step instructions to implement them yourself. You watch the workflows run in the GitHub Actions UI and interact with the platform directly.

What You'll Build

By the end of this lab, you'll have a production-grade pipeline that looks like this:

%%{init: {'theme': 'base', 'themeVariables': {'primaryColor': '#dce6f0', 'primaryTextColor': '#24292f', 'primaryBorderColor': '#82a5c9', 'lineColor': '#57606a', 'secondaryColor': '#f0f4e8', 'tertiaryColor': '#fef3e0'}}}%%
graph LR
    tag[Tag Release] --> test[Test Matrix<br/>Node 18/20/22]
    tag --> lint[Lint]
    test --> build[Build]
    lint --> build
    build --> staging[Deploy Staging]
    staging --> approve{Manual<br/>Approval}
    approve --> production[Deploy Production]
    production --> release[Create<br/>GitHub Release]

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Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+ -- Download
• git -- Download
• A GitHub account -- Sign up
• GitHub CLI (gh) -- Install (optional but recommended)

Getting Started

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/Rmohid/github-actions-demo.git
cd github-actions-demo

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run tests locally (to verify everything works)
npm test

# Start with Chapter 1

Open docs/chapters/01-your-first-workflow.md and follow along.

Chapters

#	Chapter	What You'll Learn
1	Your First Workflow	Workflow files, YAML syntax, triggers, jobs, steps, the Actions UI
2	Running Tests in CI	Marketplace actions, checkout, setup-node, running tests, status badges
3	Linting and Code Quality	Multiple jobs, needs dependencies, parallel execution, job conditionals
4	Pull Request Workflows	PR triggers, branch protection, required status checks, GITHUB_TOKEN
5	Build Artifacts and Caching	Dependency caching, upload/download artifacts, retention policies
6	Environment Variables and Secrets	env scoping, ${{ }} expressions, contexts, secrets management
7	Environments and Deployment	GitHub Environments, approval gates, deploying to GitHub Pages
8	Matrix Builds and Reusable Workflows	Matrix strategy, multi-version testing, workflow_call, DRY pipelines
9	Custom Actions and Advanced Triggers	Composite actions, workflow_dispatch, schedule, cron triggers
10	The Complete Production Pipeline	Release tagging, full pipeline, rollback strategy, concurrency controls
11	AI in Your Pipeline	AI-powered code review, LLM integration, prompt engineering for CI

The App

The learning vehicle is a simple calculator web application built with Node.js and Express. It has:

• API routes: /api/add, /api/subtract, /api/multiply, /api/divide
• Web UI: A single-page calculator interface
• Tests: Unit tests (Vitest) for the calculator logic and integration tests for the API
• Linting: ESLint for code quality
• Build: Generates static HTML for GitHub Pages deployment

The app is deliberately simple -- it exists to give the CI/CD pipeline something real to test, lint, build, and deploy. The focus is on the pipeline, not the app.

Project Structure

github-actions-demo/
├── .github/
│   ├── workflows/       # GitHub Actions workflow files (you build these)
│   └── actions/         # Custom composite actions (Chapter 9)
├── src/
│   ├── calculator.js    # Calculator logic (pure functions)
│   ├── index.js         # Express server with API routes
│   └── public/
│       └── index.html   # Web UI
├── tests/
│   ├── calculator.test.js  # Unit tests
│   └── api.test.js         # API integration tests
├── scripts/
│   └── build.js         # Build script for GitHub Pages
├── docs/
│   └── chapters/        # Learning guides (11 chapters)
├── package.json
└── eslint.config.js

License

MIT