hi-donwi CI/CD & Automation
Overview
Automate the checks and the release so quality is enforced and shipping is boring.
When to use
- Creating/maintaining a CI pipeline or deployment workflow.
- Adding quality gates; debugging a red build; designing a rollout.
Process
- Shift left — run the fastest, most decisive checks first: lint → unit tests → build → integration/e2e → perf/security gates. Fail fast.
- Make it reproducible — pinned versions, clean environment, cached deps; no machine-specific assumptions.
- Gate merges on the pipeline; keep the default branch always releasable.
- Deploy safely — automate releases; use staged/canary rollouts and feature flags for risky changes; ensure a fast rollback path.
- Keep it fast — parallelize, cache, and split slow suites so feedback stays quick.
- Debug failures from the actual logs (see
debugging); reproduce locally before "fix CI" commits.
Red flags
- Flaky tests left red or retried blindly until green.
- Secrets in workflow files instead of the CI secret store.
- Deploys with no rollback plan; big-bang releases of risky changes.
- Slow pipelines that push people to bypass them.
Verification
- The pipeline blocks merges on failure and passes deterministically.
- A release can be rolled back quickly; risky changes ship behind a flag.
Reference Index
references/expanded-guidance.md— deeper CI/CD pipeline design, quality gates, deployment, and automation guidance.