How CI/CD Fits Into Your Development Workflow

CI/CD is not a separate process bolted on the side; it lives inside the commit-to-deploy loop you already follow.

To make CI/CD concrete, it helps to trace a single change through the day-to-day developer workflow. This lesson follows one feature from a local commit all the way to production, pointing out exactly where automation kicks in.

Commit: local work

You write code on a feature branch and commit your changes. At this stage CI is not running yet, but good habits here - small commits, clear messages - pay off later when the pipeline reports results against your changes. Some teams also run a subset of checks locally with pre-commit hooks to catch obvious issues before pushing.

Pull request: CI runs

When you push your branch and open a pull request, CI springs into action. The pipeline builds your branch and runs the test suite, posting results directly on the PR. Reviewers see at a glance whether your change is green. This is the heart of CI: every proposed change is automatically verified before anyone merges it.

Merge: integration into main

Once the PR is approved and all required checks pass, you merge into the main branch. Branch protection rules (covered later in the course) ensure you literally cannot merge a failing change. The merge itself often triggers another pipeline run against the freshly integrated main branch, confirming everything still works together.

Deploy: out to users

Depending on your setup, the merge to main either deploys automatically (continuous deployment) or marks the build as ready for a human to release (continuous delivery). Either way, the same tested artifact that passed CI is what reaches production - no separate, untested build is made by hand.

The loop, in order

Commit to a feature branch locally.
Open a pull request - CI builds and tests it.
Get review and green checks, then merge to main.
Main triggers deploy (auto) or a release-ready build (manual button).

Key takeaways

CI/CD attaches to the existing commit, PR, merge, deploy loop.
The pull request is where CI gives developers and reviewers fast feedback.
The exact artifact that passed CI is what gets deployed.