Explosion Bot workflow (explosion/thinc)

The Explosion Bot workflow from explosion/thinc, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

What it does

This is the Explosion Bot workflow from the explosion/thinc repository, a real project running GitHub Actions. It is shown here with attribution under its MIT license.

Below, Latchkey shows a faster, safer version produced by its optimization engine.

The workflow

name: Explosion Bot

on:
  issue_comment:
    types:
      - created
      - edited

permissions: {}

jobs:
  explosion-bot:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@de0fac2e4500dabe0009e67214ff5f5447ce83dd # v6
      - uses: actions/setup-python@a309ff8b426b58ec0e2a45f0f869d46889d02405 # v6
      - name: Install and run explosion-bot
        run: |
          git config --global url."https://x-access-token:${EXPLOSIONBOT_TOKEN}@github.com/".insteadOf "https://github.com/"
          pip install git+https://github.com/explosion/explosion-bot@da93b7c284cc002c63218de7e0e82610e47ced91
          python -m explosionbot
        env:
          EXPLOSIONBOT_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.EXPLOSIONBOT_TOKEN }}
          INPUT_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.EXPLOSIONBOT_TOKEN }}
          INPUT_BK_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.BUILDKITE_SECRET }}
          ENABLED_COMMANDS: "test_gpu,test_slow,test_slow_gpu"
          ALLOWED_TEAMS: "spacy-maintainers"

The same workflow, on Latchkey

Estimated ~20% faster on cache hits, plus fewer wasted runs and a safer supply chain. Added and changed lines are highlighted.

name: Explosion Bot
 
on:
  issue_comment:
    types:
      - created
      - edited
 
permissions: {}
 
jobs:
  explosion-bot:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@de0fac2e4500dabe0009e67214ff5f5447ce83dd # v6
      - uses: actions/setup-python@a309ff8b426b58ec0e2a45f0f869d46889d02405 # v6
        with:
          cache: 'pip'
      - name: Install and run explosion-bot
        run: |
          git config --global url."https://x-access-token:${EXPLOSIONBOT_TOKEN}@github.com/".insteadOf "https://github.com/"
          pip install git+https://github.com/explosion/explosion-bot@da93b7c284cc002c63218de7e0e82610e47ced91
          python -m explosionbot
        env:
          EXPLOSIONBOT_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.EXPLOSIONBOT_TOKEN }}
          INPUT_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.EXPLOSIONBOT_TOKEN }}
          INPUT_BK_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.BUILDKITE_SECRET }}
          ENABLED_COMMANDS: "test_gpu,test_slow,test_slow_gpu"
          ALLOWED_TEAMS: "spacy-maintainers"
 

What changed

• Run on Latchkey managed runners with one line (runs-on), which apply the fixes below automatically and self-heal transient failures. This example uses latchkey-small; pick the runner size that fits the job.
• Cache dependency installs on the setup step so they are served from cache.
• Add a job timeout so a hung step cannot burn hours of runner time.

What Latchkey heals here

This workflow has steps that commonly fail on transient issues (network, registries, flaky browsers). On Latchkey managed runners they are detected, retried, and self-healed instead of failing your build:

• Dependency installs

This workflow runs 1 job per trigger. On Latchkey the same minutes cost up to 58% less than GitHub-hosted, with zero queue time.

Actions used in this workflow