DevOps Pipeline

Implement comprehensive DevOps quality gates adapted to project type, with a shift-left philosophy: run as many checks as possible locally via pre-commit so developers get fast feedback and CI is a safety net rather than the primary gate.

Core principle: if a check can run on a developer's machine, it runs there. GitHub Actions runs only what a laptop genuinely cannot — matrix version testing, secrets-dependent scans, deployment, coverage publishing — plus one cheap job proving the hooks were not bypassed.

Check Routing Table

Every check lands in exactly one lane. This table is the single source of truth: workflow steps 2 and 3, the reference files, and any config this skill generates must agree with it.

A check that fits an earlier lane must not be repeated in a later one. CI re-running the whole hook set on every push is the failure mode this skill exists to prevent.

To stay within the agent's context budget, this SKILL keeps templates short and links to references/*.md for language-specific configs, workflow templates, and the CLI E2E script.

Repo Sync Before Edits (mandatory)

Before creating/updating/deleting files in an existing repository, sync the current branch with remote:

branch="$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)"
git fetch origin
git pull --rebase origin "$branch"

If the working tree is not clean, stash first, sync, then restore:

git stash push -u -m "pre-sync"
branch="$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)"
git fetch origin && git pull --rebase origin "$branch"
git stash pop

If origin is missing, pull is unavailable, or rebase/stash conflicts occur, stop and ask the user before continuing.

Safety Rails

This skill writes config into someone else's repository and installs git hooks. Observe all of these:

• **Never overwrite an existing .pre-commit-config.yaml or .github/workflows/*.yml.** Write a <file>.bak backup first, merge the new hooks into the existing file, show the user the diff, and ask them to confirm before writing. Preserve user-defined hooks and pinned rev: values, and leave the backup in place until the user confirms the merge.
• Do a dry run before you write. Validate the proposed config with pre-commit validate-config, and run pre-commit run --all-files before installing the hooks — findings surface without any commit being blocked. Show the generated workflow as a diff; never land a file the user has not seen.
• Check for an existing git hook before installing. pre-commit install preserves a foreign hook by moving it to .git/hooks/pre-commit.legacy and running in migration mode. Never pass -f/--overwrite, which removes that hook silently — if the user wants it gone, have them confirm the deletion explicitly.
• Never run git commit --no-verify or git push --no-verify on the user's behalf. A failing hook is a finding to report, not an obstacle to route around.
• Surface failures, never suppress them. Do not add a hook id to SKIP, relax a lint rule, or lower a coverage threshold to turn a run green. Report the failure and let the user decide.
• Stop rather than guess when the stack is undetected, pre-commit is absent, or origin is missing — see Edge Cases for each.

Workflow

1. Analyze Project

Detect project characteristics:

# Check for package files and configs
ls -la package.json pyproject.toml Cargo.toml go.mod pom.xml build.gradle *.csproj 2>/dev/null
ls -la .eslintrc* .prettierrc* tsconfig.json mypy.ini setup.cfg ruff.toml 2>/dev/null
ls -la .pre-commit-config.yaml .github/workflows/*.yml 2>/dev/null

Identify:

• Languages: JS/TS, Python, Go, Rust, Java, C#, etc.
• Frameworks: React, Next.js, Django, FastAPI, etc.
• Build system: npm, yarn, pnpm, pip, poetry, cargo, go, maven, gradle
• Existing tooling: Linters, formatters, type checkers already configured
• Is this a CLI tool? — if yes, enumerate all commands/subcommands (check README, --help, click/argparse/cobra source) to build an E2E test suite

2. Configure Pre-commit Hooks (maximize local coverage)

Install pre-commit framework:

pip install pre-commit  # or brew install pre-commit

Create .pre-commit-config.yaml based on detected stack. See [references/precommit-configs.md](references/precommit-configs.md) for language-specific configurations.

pre-commit stage — every commit, under 10 seconds on changed files:

• Format checks (Prettier, Black/Ruff, gofmt, rustfmt)
• Lint (ESLint, Ruff, golangci-lint, Clippy)
• Type checks (tsc, mypy)
• Security scans that work offline (Bandit, cargo-audit, gosec, detect-secrets)
• Fast unit tests
• Build/compile verification (catches import errors, compile failures early)

pre-push stage — every git push, under 60 seconds:

• Full test suite (unit + integration)
• End-to-end tests for every CLI command (see below)
• Coverage threshold enforcement
• Slower linters (full golangci-lint ruleset)

GitHub Actions only — what a laptop cannot do:

• Matrix version testing (multiple Node/Python/Go versions)
• Secrets-based scans (Snyk, SAST tools needing tokens)
• Deployment / release workflows
• Coverage upload to an external service
• Flaky or environment-sensitive tests that need a clean VM

Use the modern stage names. pre-commit 3.2 renamed commit to pre-commit and push to pre-push; the old names emit a deprecation warning on 4.x and are scheduled for removal. Always emit the new names, and run pre-commit migrate-config against any pre-existing config still using the old ones.

CLI End-to-End Testing

If the project is a CLI tool, create scripts/e2e_test.sh that exercises every command/subcommand to verify the CLI works end-to-end (not just compiles). Wire it into pre-commit on the pre-push stage.

See [references/cli-e2e.md](references/cli-e2e.md) for command discovery patterns, the script template, and the pre-commit hook snippet.

Install hooks:

pre-commit install
pre-commit install --hook-type pre-push  # pre-push hooks are NOT installed by default
pre-commit run --all-files  # test commit-stage hooks against existing code

git commit --no-verify and git push --no-verify skip every hook, and nothing local can prevent that. The CI bypass guard in step 3 is what keeps these gates enforceable — do not drop it when trimming CI.

3. Create GitHub Actions Workflows (lean CI)

Create .github/workflows/ci.yml. Keep it thin: the hooks already ran everything that runs locally, so CI covers the third lane of the routing table plus one guard. See [references/github-actions.md](references/github-actions.md) for workflow templates.

CI runs exactly four kinds of thing:

1. Bypass guard — re-runs both hook stages, scoped to the pull request's diff so it costs seconds, not minutes. This is the one deliberate overlap with pre-commit, and it exists because --no-verify otherwise makes local gates optional.
2. Version matrix — the only lane that genuinely needs several runners.
3. Secrets-dependent work — scans and uploads needing tokens a laptop should not hold.
4. Deploy / release — on merge to the default branch.

The bypass guard, in full:

  hooks:
    name: Verify hooks were not bypassed
    if: github.event_name == 'pull_request'
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
      # ... set up the project toolchain and Python here ...
      - name: Run both hook stages over the PR diff
        run: |
          pip install pre-commit
          base="${{ github.event.pull_request.base.sha }}"
          pre-commit run --from-ref "$base" --to-ref HEAD
          pre-commit run --hook-stage pre-push --from-ref "$base" --to-ref HEAD

Four details are load-bearing; drop any one and the job fails on its first run:

• Both pre-commit run lines. The first executes commit-stage hooks only — the full suite and the CLI E2E tests live on pre-push and are silently skipped without the second. pre-commit/[email protected] shares this blind spot, so call the CLI directly.
• fetch-depth: 0. actions/checkout clones at depth 1, so the base SHA is absent and --from-ref dies on a bad object.
• if: github.eventname == 'pullrequest'. On a push event github.event.before is all zeros for a branch's first push and stale after a force-push.
• The project toolchain in the same job. Hooks declared language: system shell out to npm, mypy, go, or cargo.

Keep the matrix off the hot path: gate it on push to the default branch or on a release tag, not on every PR commit. A three-version matrix on every push is triple the bill for a signal the hooks already gave locally.

4. Verify Pipeline

# Commit-stage hooks
pre-commit run --all-files

# Push-stage hooks (full suite, includes E2E) — not covered by the line above
pre-commit run --all-files --hook-stage pre-push

# Verify the CLI E2E script directly
bash scripts/e2e_test.sh

If all local checks pass, GitHub Actions becomes a thin verification layer, not the primary quality gate.

Tool Selection by Language

Which lane each of these belongs to is fixed by the Check Routing Table above — do not re-split checks differently here.

Expected Output

After running the skill, the repository contains:

1. .pre-commit-config.yaml — formatting, linting, type-checking, and fast unit tests on the pre-commit stage; full test suite, coverage threshold, and E2E tests on the pre-push stage.
2. .github/workflows/ci.yml — CI carrying only the four responsibilities from step 3: diff-scoped bypass guard, version matrix, secrets-dependent work, deploy. No standalone lint, format, type-check, or test steps duplicating a hook.
3. scripts/e2e_test.sh (CLI projects only) — executable script exercising every CLI command/subcommand.

Example .pre-commit-config.yaml snippet for a Python project:

repos:
  - repo: https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff-pre-commit
    rev: v0.4.4
    hooks:
      - id: ruff
        stages: [pre-commit]
      - id: ruff-format
        stages: [pre-commit]
  - repo: local
    hooks:
      - id: mypy
        name: mypy type check
        entry: mypy src/
        language: system
        stages: [pre-commit]
      - id: pytest-fast
        name: fast unit tests
        entry: pytest tests/unit -x -q
        language: system
        stages: [pre-commit]
      - id: pytest-full
        name: full test suite
        entry: pytest --cov=src --cov-report=xml
        language: system
        stages: [pre-push]

Acceptance Criteria

A run passes when all of the following are true:

• .pre-commit-config.yaml exists at the repo root and lists at least one hook for the detected primary language (formatter, linter, or type checker).
• Every check sits in exactly one lane of the Check Routing Table: no hook id from .pre-commit-config.yaml appears in a workflow run: step other than the bypass guard, and no check runnable on a laptop is CI-only.
• Hook stages: use the modern names (pre-commit, pre-push, manual); no generated config emits the deprecated commit or push.
• Both hook types are installed: pre-commit install and pre-commit install --hook-type pre-push.
• At least one .github/workflows/*.yml exists and carries only the four CI responsibilities from step 3.
• CI's sole overlap with pre-commit is the bypass guard, and that guard is diff-scoped (--from-ref/--to-ref) and runs both stages.
• pre-commit run --all-files and pre-commit run --all-files --hook-stage pre-push both succeed (or their failures are surfaced explicitly to the user, not auto-suppressed).
• For CLI projects, the E2E script is wired to the pre-push stage per the language reference files.

Edge Cases

• No package manager detected: Prompt the user for the language/build system before generating hooks; never guess silently.
• Pre-commit not installed: Emit the install command (pip install pre-commit or brew install pre-commit) and stop; don't generate config files for a tool that isn't present.
• Existing .pre-commit-config.yaml: Merge new hooks into the existing file rather than overwriting; preserve user-defined hooks and pinned revs.
• Monorepo with multiple languages: Generate one config with per-language hook sections and files: path filters so hooks only run on relevant subdirectories. Local language: system entries must also target the package dir (npm --prefix frontend, pytest backend/tests) — files: only filters which files trigger the hook, not cwd.
• No origin remote: Skip the repo-sync step and inform the user; proceed with local-only setup.
• Tests take >60 seconds: Demote to the next lane — pre-commit to pre-push, or pre-push to CI — and record the reason in a comment on the hook so the next reader knows it was measured, not guessed.
• Legacy config with deprecated stage names: Run pre-commit migrate-config before merging new hooks in, so the file does not end up half-migrated.
• Team bypasses hooks with --no-verify: Local gates cannot stop this. Keep the CI bypass guard, and report the bypass rate rather than adding more hooks.
• Windows-only repo: Substitute PowerShell-compatible hook entries and flag any Unix-specific commands.

Step Completion Reports

After completing each major step, output a status report in this format:

◆ [Step Name] ([step N of M] — [context])
··································································
  [Check 1]:          √ pass
  [Check 2]:          √ pass (note if relevant)
  [Check 3]:          × fail — [reason]
  [Check 4]:          √ pass
  [Criteria]:         √ N/M met
  ____________________________
  Result:             PASS | FAIL | PARTIAL

Adapt the check names to match what the step actually validates. Use √ for pass, × for fail, and — to add brief context. The "Criteria" line summarizes how many acceptance criteria were met. The "Result" line gives the overall verdict.

Skill-specific checks per phase

Phase: Project Analysis — checks: Project detection, Existing tooling scan, CLI detection, Command enumeration

Phase: Pre-commit Configuration — checks: Pre-commit setup, Commit-stage hooks installed, Push-stage hooks installed, Modern stage names used, E2E script created (if CLI)

Phase: GitHub Actions Setup — checks: GitHub Actions config, CI limited to the four responsibilities, Bypass guard runs both stages, Matrix off the per-commit path

Phase: Pipeline Verification — checks: Commit-stage hooks pass, Push-stage hooks pass, E2E tests pass (if CLI), No check duplicated across lanes

Resources

• [references/precommit-configs.md](references/precommit-configs.md) — pre-commit configs by language, with pre-push tests and E2E hooks
• [references/github-actions.md](references/github-actions.md) — GitHub Actions templates: bypass guard, matrix, deploy
• [references/cli-e2e.md](references/cli-e2e.md) — CLI command discovery, the E2E script template, and its pre-push hook