name: ci-cd-and-automation description: Automates CI/CD pipeline setup. Use when setting up or modifying build and deployment pipelines. Use when you need to automate quality gates, configure test runners in CI, or establish deployment strategies.
CI/CD and Automation
Overview
Automate quality gates so that no change reaches production without passing tests, lint, type checking, and build. CI/CD is the enforcement mechanism for every other skill — it catches what humans and agents miss, and it does so consistently on every single change.
Shift Left: Catch problems as early in the pipeline as possible. A bug caught in linting costs minutes; the same bug caught in production costs hours. Move checks upstream — static analysis before tests, tests before staging, staging before production.
Faster is Safer: Smaller batches and more frequent releases reduce risk, not increase it. A deployment with 3 changes is easier to debug than one with 30. Frequent releases build confidence in the release process itself.
When to Use
- Setting up a new project's CI pipeline
- Adding or modifying automated checks
- Configuring deployment pipelines
- When a change should trigger automated verification
- Debugging CI failures
The Quality Gate Pipeline
Every change goes through these gates before merge:
Pull Request Opened
│
▼
┌─────────────────┐
│ LINT CHECK │ eslint, prettier
│ ↓ pass │
│ TYPE CHECK │ tsc --noEmit
│ ↓ pass │
│ UNIT TESTS │ jest/vitest
│ ↓ pass │
│ BUILD │ npm run build
│ ↓ pass │
│ INTEGRATION │ API/DB tests
│ ↓ pass │
│ E2E (optional) │ Playwright/Cypress
│ ↓ pass │
│ SECURITY AUDIT │ npm audit
│ ↓ pass │
│ BUNDLE SIZE │ bundlesize check
└─────────────────┘
│
▼
Ready for review