TIL you can create your own GitHub Actions workflow templates

So you know how there's this wizard that you can use to create new GitHub Actions right? It turns out that there's a way to add your own GitHub Actions templates there!

All you need to do is add a workflow-templates/*.yml and workflow-templates/*.properties.json pair in your user/.github repository. This works for both organizations (like the official GitHub docs say) and regular users.

workflow-templates/say-hi.yml

name: Say hi!
on:
  push:
    branches: [$default-branch]
jobs:
  say-hi:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Echo "Hi!" to the user
        run: echo "Hi!"

workflow-templates/say-hi.properties.json

{
    "name": "Say hi!",
    "description": "Says hi to the user",
    "iconName": "emoji-wave",
    "categories": ["Automation"],
    "filePatterns": ["README.md"]
}

workflow-templates/emoji-wave.svg

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 100 100">
  <text y="75px" font-size="75px">👋</text>
</svg>

📚 Further reading: Creating starter workflows for your organization (also works for users too)

How you might want to use this

A great way to take advantage of this template feature is to make workflow templates for things you do often or in every repository. Think like...

1. Repetitive Node.js test.yml workflow
2. Workflow to deploy to GitHub Pages from npm run build
3. Mirroring wiki/ in your Git reposutory to a GitHub wiki page
4. Enabling /help in any issue

Anytime you think "I wish I could just copy-paste this workflow from my previous project" then it might be time to make that a template.