How to Trigger a Workflow When a Release Is Published in GitHub Actions

The release event with the published type fires when a draft or new release is published, giving you the release metadata in the payload.

Add on.release with types: [published]. Read the tag and upload URL from github.event.release, which is useful for attaching build artifacts to the release.

Steps

• Add release: under on with types: [published].
• Read github.event.release.tag_name for the version.
• Attach assets with the GitHub CLI or an upload action.

Workflow

on:
  release:
    types: [published]
jobs:
  assets:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - run: npm ci && npm run build
      - run: gh release upload "${{ github.event.release.tag_name }}" dist/*.zip
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Gotchas

• Creating a draft release fires created, not published; use the type that matches your flow.
• If the release is created by another workflow using GITHUB_TOKEN, it will not trigger this one, by design.

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