Getting started

Set up your first GitHub Actions workflow

A GitHub Actions workflow automates tasks in your repository. Workflows are written as YAML files and stored in: .github/workflows/.
There are two main ways to create a workflow:

Option 1: Use starter workflows

GitHub provides ready-made templates you can customize.

1. Open your repository on GitHub.

2. Go to the Actions tab. You’ll see a list of suggested workflows.

   

3. You can search for workflows with keywords or filter by category.

4. Select the workflow you want and click Configure. GitHub will open the workflow in an editor.

5. Follow any setup notes in the comments. Some workflows use secrets e.g. ${{ secrets.npm_token }}. For more information, see using secrets in GitHub Actions.

6. Customize the template as much as you want.

7. Once done, click Commit Changes. This automatically creates a file in: .github/workflows/<workflow-name>.yaml

   

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tip

This is the fastest way to get started. You can still edit the workflow file later.

Option 2: Create workflows manually

If you want to write a workflow from scratch:

1. In your project folder, create the folders: .github/workflows. This will create two folders: .github and workflows.
2. In workflows, create a file named hello.yaml.
3. In the hello.yaml file, paste the following code.

    name: My First Workflow  # Just a name for your workflow

    on: 
    push:       # "Trigger" - when should this workflow run?
        branches: 
        - main  # Run only when new code is pushed to the "main" branch

    jobs:
      print-hello:  # This is the name of our job
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest  # GitHub gives us a free computer with Ubuntu installed

        steps:
          - name: Print a message  # Name of the step
            run: echo "Hello, I’m testing GitHub Actions!"  # What to do: print a message

Test your workflow

1. Open the VS Code terminal and run the following commands:

   git add . 
   git commit -m “Type commit message here”
   git push

2. Go to GitHub and click the actions tab. You should see a new workflow run like this:

   

If the job shows a green tick, the workflow worked.

Breakdown of the workflow

Section	Explanation
name:My First Workflow	The label used to identify your workflow.
on:	Defines the trigger. Here, it runs every time you upload (push) code the main branch.
jobs:	A group of tasks that run together. Here, we have one job (print-hello).
runs-on:	The type of virtual machine (runner) GitHub provides. Here, it is ubuntu-latest. It will run regardless of the Operating System of your local machine.
steps:	Inside a job, you list all the things you want to do. Here, there’s just one step: print a message.
run: echo "Hello, GitHub Actions!"	This is the command to run. In this case, it prints the text “Hello, GitHub Actions!” to the console.

📝 Pro tip

You can create multiple workflows in the same repository for different tasks (testing, deployment, notifications, etc.).

The result

In the actions tab:

• The left panel will show your workflow name (My First Workflow).

• The label will be the commit message you used.

• When you click the label, you should see a single job (print-hello) that completed successfully.

  

Now you understand the structure of a GitHub Action workflow.