GitHub Actions Workflow: Create Your First Workflow from Scratch

Description

This video is a step-by-step guide to creating your first GitHub Actions workflow from scratch. You’ll learn how GitHub Actions works at a practical level by building a complete workflow file and running it inside a real repository. The focus is on understanding the structure, execution flow, and common mistakes so you can confidently create and modify workflows on your own. We begin with the required folder structure and explain why GitHub only detects workflows placed inside .github/workflows. You’ll see how workflow files are loaded, when they are ignored, and how file placement affects execution. Next, we cover workflow triggers in detail. You’ll learn how the on: push event works, what causes a workflow run to start, and how GitHub decides which branch activity should trigger the workflow. This builds a clear foundation for adding more triggers later, such as pull requests, schedules, or manual runs. The video then breaks down jobs and runners. You’ll understand what a job represents, how jobs run on GitHub-hosted virtual machines, and why runs-on: ubuntu-latest is commonly used for beginner workflows. We also explain what happens inside the runner before and after your steps execute. You’ll learn how steps work inside a job, how they execute sequentially, and how each step affects the environment for the next one. The tutorial explains the difference between running shell commands and using prebuilt actions from the GitHub Marketplace. A dedicated section explains the actions/checkout step and why it is required to access your repository code during a workflow run. Without this step, many beginners run into confusing errors, so the reasoning behind it is explained clearly. After writing the workflow, we push it to the repository and walk through the GitHub Actions interface. You’ll learn how to locate your workflow runs, inspect each job, read step logs, and identify where failures occur. This is an essential skill for debugging real workflows. The video also covers common beginner errors in GitHub Actions workflows, including YAML indentation issues, incorrect key names, missing colons, and workflows not appearing in the Actions tab. You’ll learn how to spot these issues quickly and fix them without guessing. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll understand how a GitHub Actions workflow is structured, how it runs, and how to verify that it’s working correctly. This foundation makes it much easier to move into more advanced topics like testing, deployment, and CI/CD pipelines. #githubactionsworkflow, #githubactions, #githubworkflows, #githubautomation, #cicd, #devops, #githubtutorial, #automation, #softwaredevelopment, #programming, #developers