/ci-cd-and-automation

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

# .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

  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

  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:

# 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.

// Simple feature flag pattern
if (featureFlags.isEnabled('n