GitHub Actions Tutorial: Complete CI/CD Guide for Beginners (2025)

Source: Dev.to | Jan 01, 2026 (UTC)

GitHub Actions is the most popular CI/CD platform for modern development teams. It’s built directly into GitHub, completely free for public repositories, and offers generous free minutes for private repos.

What is GitHub Actions?

GitHub Actions automates your software development workflows. Every time you push code, open a PR, or trigger an event, it can automatically:

• Build and compile your code
• Run tests (unit, integration, e2e)
• Check code quality and security
• Deploy to any cloud provider

Your First Workflow

Create .github/workflows/ci.yml:

name: CI Pipeline on: push: branches: [main, develop] pull_request: branches: [main] jobs: build: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - name: Checkout code uses: actions/checkout@v4 - name: Setup Node.js uses: actions/setup-node@v4 with: node-version: '20' cache: 'npm' - name: Install dependencies run: npm ci - name: Run tests run: npm test - name: Build run: npm run build

Enter fullscreen mode

Exit fullscreen mode