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JLarky
JLarky

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Modern Ways to Tame GitHub Action Workflows

#programming #githubactions #abotwrotethis

If you’ve ever cracked open a .github/workflows folder, you probably felt that mix of resignation and dread that only YAML can inspire. Indentation errors, random on: vs jobs: confusion, the joy of debugging a misaligned dash — truly a rite of passage. If you’re lucky, GitHub Actions is the only place in your stack where you still have to deal with YAML on a daily basis. For the rest of us, it’s an ever-present reminder that whitespace is a cruel and unforgiving god.

Thankfully, we don’t have to hand-craft every workflow file anymore. You can generate them, reuse them, or even visually design them — the YAML just happens to be the final delivery format. GitHub itself has been improving the situation: first with reusable workflows and composite actions, and more recently by adding YAML anchors (finally!) to let you reuse sections within the same file. Still, those features only go so far — you can’t run a loop or type-check your inputs, and good luck spotting a missing field until your CI job fails.

The Landscape: Lint, Generate, or Visualize

There are three main schools of thought when it comes to keeping your sanity with GitHub Actions:

  1. Linting and validation.
    Tools like actionlint help you catch structural mistakes before you push your code. They parse and validate your YAML files, ensuring field names, indentation, and job references are valid — basically a CI spellchecker. If you’re living inside VS Code, the GitHub Actions extension provides autocomplete, schema validation, and instant red squiggles for common errors. Linting doesn’t remove YAML from your life, but it makes it less of a horror movie. Think of this as adding bumpers to your YAML bowling lane — you’ll still hit the walls, but fewer builds will end up in CI jail.

  2. Generation and code-as-config.
    This camp believes the best YAML is the one you never have to write. Instead of treating workflows as text files, you define them in a real programming language like TypeScript, Kotlin, or C# and compile them to YAML. This gives you static types, autocompletion, loops, variables, and the ability to share workflow components as normal code modules. It’s configuration as code — literally. You can create a single “build pipeline” function and reuse it across dozens of repos, and your editor will help you refactor it safely. The YAML output is still there for GitHub to consume, but it’s now just a build artifact, not the source of truth.

  3. Visual tools and builders.
    A newer breed of tools aims to make workflow authoring accessible even to non-developers. Visual editors like Actionforge let you drag, drop, and connect boxes representing jobs and steps. They handle the YAML generation for you and even enable logic that plain YAML doesn’t support — such as loops, conditionals, or branches. These are especially useful in large orgs where not every team wants to read YAML syntax diagrams just to tweak a test matrix.

Tooling in the Wild

The “YAML escape plan” ecosystem is surprisingly diverse, spanning from strongly typed DSLs to visual editors. What unites them is the goal of making workflows less fragile and more maintainable — each taking a slightly different path toward that end.

The most common approach right now is generation via a general-purpose language. Here, developers write workflows in TypeScript, Kotlin, or C#, relying on familiar tooling like type checking and linting to ensure correctness. These solutions treat CI pipelines the way frontend developers treat CSS: you don’t edit the generated file — you write the higher-level definition and let the compiler handle the messy bits. For large teams, this means workflows can evolve safely, reviewed and versioned just like application code.

Meanwhile, visual tools have opened the door for teams who prefer to reason about pipelines visually rather than textually. The node-graph interface of Actionforge, for instance, makes it possible to express complex logic with minimal YAML knowledge — a huge win for onboarding and accessibility. At the same time, the YAML remains fully exportable, so teams aren’t locked in if they ever want to switch back.

Finally, linting and IDE integration form the safety net for everyone else. Even if you stick to plain YAML, actionlint and the official VS Code GitHub Actions extension offer quick feedback loops that save hours of trial-and-error debugging. Combined with GitHub’s recent addition of YAML anchors and reusable workflows, they give YAML authors some of the modularity and reuse long enjoyed by code-based alternatives.

A Few Standout Tools

Here are a few of the most active projects tackling the “YAML fatigue” problem, roughly ordered by GitHub stars:

  • github-workflows-kt (★630+) – A mature Kotlin DSL for GitHub Actions. You write workflows in strongly typed Kotlin and compile to YAML. Excellent type safety, powerful IDE support, and a thriving community.
  • ghats (★130+) – A TypeScript-based workflow generator that aims for simplicity and predictable YAML output. Ideal for teams already using Node tooling.
  • gha-ts (★110+) – A lightweight TypeScript library with deterministic generation and strong typing. It focuses on the developer experience of defining workflows as real code while keeping YAML output transparent and review-friendly.
  • Actionforge (★75+) – A VS Code extension that replaces YAML editing with a node-based visual interface, including branching and looping that standard YAML can’t do.

Each of these tools attacks the same pain point from a different angle. Whether you prefer Kotlin’s strict typing, TypeScript’s developer ergonomics, or Actionforge’s drag-and-drop design, the end goal is the same — reducing the human error surface of YAML while keeping your CI pipelines consistent and DRY.

The Bigger Question

Wouldn’t it be cool if GitHub just let us use something other than YAML to define workflows? GitLab, Buildkite, and others already allow pipelines in JSON, HCL, or even full programming languages. GitHub Actions is incredibly powerful, but its YAML-only approach increasingly feels like a relic of simpler times.

Until that changes, we’ll keep finding clever ways to wrap, lint, or generate our workflows. Whether you choose reusable workflows, anchors, or a DSL in your favorite language, the mission remains the same: spend less time fixing indentation and more time shipping code.

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