What Is needs:artifacts?
needs:artifacts is an option on a job's dependency declaration that decides whether the job pulls in artifacts from its upstream jobs. Enabling it makes those build outputs available; disabling it skips the download to start sooner. It lets a job depend on completion without always inheriting heavy files.
Why it matters
Downloading large artifacts a job does not use wastes time and bandwidth on every run. Controlling artifact passing with this setting lets a job depend on an upstream job's success while skipping unneeded files. Tuning it trims pipeline latency, which matters on metered runners.
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