Building CI Pipelines

Purpose

CI/CD pipelines automate testing, building, and deploying software. This skill provides patterns for constructing robust, secure, and efficient pipelines across GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Argo Workflows, and Jenkins. Focus areas: supply chain security (SLSA), monorepo optimization, caching, and parallelization.

When to Use This Skill

Invoke when:

• Setting up continuous integration for new projects
• Implementing automated testing workflows
• Building container images with security provenance
• Optimizing slow CI pipelines (especially monorepos)
• Implementing SLSA supply chain security
• Configuring multi-platform builds
• Setting up GitOps automation
• Migrating from legacy CI systems

Platform Selection

GitHub-hosted → GitHub Actions (SLSA native, 10K+ actions, OIDC) GitLab-hosted → GitLab CI (parent-child pipelines, built-in security) Kubernetes → Argo Workflows (DAG-based, event-driven) Legacy → Jenkins (migrate when possible)

Platform Comparison

Feature	GitHub Actions	GitLab CI	Argo	Jenkins
Ease of Use	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐⭐	⭐⭐
SLSA	Native	Manual	Good	Manual
Monorepo	Good	Excellent	Manual	Plugins

Quick Start Patterns

Pattern 1: Basic CI (Lint → Test → Build)

# GitHub Actions
name: CI
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: npm run lint

  test:
    needs: lint
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: npm test

  build:
    needs: test
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: npm run build

Pattern 2: Matrix Strategy (Multi-Platform)