How to Create a GitHub Workflow

Let’s walk through the steps to set up a simple workflow in your repository:

Step 1: Create a folder where you want to setup GitHub Workflow 

Step 2: Create a Workflow File
Inside your project, make a folder  .github/workflows/
In that folder, create a file (example: test.yml).

Step 3: Write the Workflow
Use YAML syntax to define what your workflow should do.

Example: A workflow that runs tests every time you push code to the main branch:

name: Run Tests

on: 
  push:
    branches: [ "main" ]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - run: echo "Running tests..."

Step 5: Save and commit the changes on GitHub

Step 4: Checking Workflow Output in GitHub

• Go to your repository on GitHub.
• At the top, click on the Actions tab.
• This shows a list of all workflows that have been triggered (e.g., by a push).
• Select the workflow run from the list  you want to inspect.
• You’ll see a list of jobs (like test, build, etc.).
• Click on a job, you’ll see the step-by-step logs/output.

What is actions/checkout@v3?
It is a GitHub Action — a reusable piece of code provided by GitHub.

• checkout means "check out the repository" → it downloads (clones) your project’s code into the workflow runner (the temporary server where the workflow runs).
• @v3 means you are using version 3 of this action.

Without actions/checkout, your workflow runner wouldn’t have your project files, so commands like npm install or dotnet build would fail — because there’s no code to build!

Where to get information?
All official and community actions are available on the GitHub Marketplace:
https://github.com/marketplace?type=actions 

There, you can search for actions like checkout, setup-node, upload-artifact, etc.
Each action has documentation showing:

• What it does
• Example usage
• Inputs (things you can configure)
• Outputs