pipeline-blueprint

# CI/CD Configuration Best Practices This skill provides CI/CD pipeline templates and best practices for **GitHub Actions** and **GitLab CI**. It recommends configurations based on project type, helping teams quickly set up reliable, secure, and efficient pipelines. ## How to Use When a user describes their project (language, framework, deployment target), recommend the most appropriate pipeline template below. Adapt stages, caching strategies, and deployment steps to match their stack. --- ## General Best Practices ### Pipeline Design Principles 1. **Fail fast**: Run linting and unit tests before expensive integration or E2E tests. 2. **Cache aggressively**: Cache dependency directories (`node_modules`, `.pip_cache`, `.m2`, `.gradle`) to speed up builds. 3. **Pin versions**: Pin CI runner images, tool versions, and action versions to SHA or exact tags — never use `latest`. 4. **Least privilege**: Use minimal permissions for tokens and credentials. Prefer OIDC over long-lived secrets where supported. 5. **Parallelize**: Split test suites across parallel jobs. Use matrix builds for multi-version testing. 6. **Immutable artifacts**: Build once, promote the same artifact through staging → production. 7. **Branch protection**: Require CI to pass before merging. Use status checks on the default branch. ### Security Checklist - Never hardcode secrets in pipeline files; use the platform's secret management (GitHub Secrets / GitLab CI Variables). - Audit third-party actions/...