CI/CD with GitHub Actions
Every professional team runs CI/CD. Every solo builder who has shipped something embarrassing in production wishes they had. This course covers the full pipeline: automated testing on every PR, preview deployments for every branch, production deploys on merge, secrets management, environment variables, caching for fast builds, and the workflows that keep code quality high without slowing you down.
What you'll learn
Course outline
Free — no account needed
Full course — $59 one-time
Preview Deployments
Deploy every PR to a unique URL — review features in the browser before merging
Automated Production Deployment
Deploy to production on merge — reliably, repeatably, with automatic rollback on failure
Secrets and Environment Variables
Manage API keys, database URLs, and config values safely across environments
Matrix Builds and Parallelism
Test across Node versions and split long test suites to run faster
Release Workflows
Semantic versioning, automated changelogs, GitHub Releases, and deployment tags
CI/CD Production Checklist
The complete pipeline review for Launchpad — verify every safety check is in place
Get the full course
8 lessons — from your first GitHub Actions workflow to production pipelines with staging environments and rollback.
Written by the RadarTrek editorial team · Reviewed June 2026
About this course
CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) automates the process of testing, building, and deploying code — catching bugs before they reach production and making deployments routine rather than risky. GitHub Actions is the most widely-used CI/CD platform for open source and private projects, with deep integration into the GitHub workflow. This CI/CD tutorial covers building GitHub Actions workflows from scratch: running tests, linting, building artefacts, deploying to cloud providers, and implementing environment management.
CI/CD skills are foundational for any developer who ships code professionally. After this course you will be able to configure GitHub Actions workflows for a Next.js or Node.js project, run tests and linting on pull requests, deploy to Vercel or AWS on merge to main, manage environment-specific secrets, and set up branch protection rules that enforce quality gates.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between CI and CD?
Continuous Integration (CI) is the practice of automatically building and testing code every time a developer pushes changes — catching integration problems early. Continuous Deployment (CD) extends this by automatically deploying passing changes to a staging or production environment. CI is about quality assurance; CD is about making deployment frequent and automatic. Most teams implement CI first and add CD as their test confidence grows.
What is a GitHub Actions workflow?
A workflow is a YAML file in `.github/workflows/` that defines automated processes triggered by events. A workflow contains one or more jobs; each job runs on a virtual machine and contains a series of steps. Steps can run shell commands or use pre-built actions from the GitHub marketplace. A typical CI workflow: trigger on pull requests, check out the code, install dependencies, run linting, run tests, and report the result.
How do I store secrets in GitHub Actions?
Sensitive values (API keys, deploy tokens, database URLs) are stored as GitHub repository secrets under Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions. In workflows, reference them as `${{ secrets.MY_SECRET }}`. Secrets are masked in logs — they will not appear in output. Never hardcode credentials in workflow files or commit `.env` files to the repository.
How do I set up automatic deployment to Vercel?
The simplest approach for Vercel is to connect your GitHub repository in the Vercel dashboard — Vercel will automatically deploy on every push to main and preview deployments on pull requests. For custom deployment control (deploying only after tests pass), use the Vercel GitHub Action in a workflow that runs after your test job succeeds. Set `VERCEL_TOKEN`, `VERCEL_ORG_ID`, and `VERCEL_PROJECT_ID` as repository secrets.
What are branch protection rules?
Branch protection rules prevent direct pushes to important branches (main, production) and enforce requirements before merging: status checks must pass (CI tests), a minimum number of reviewers must approve, and the branch must be up to date with main. Set these in Settings > Branches in your GitHub repository. Combined with CI workflows, they create a quality gate that prevents broken code from reaching production.