Lint GitHub Actions Workflows workflow (nicholas-fedor/watchtower)

The Lint GitHub Actions Workflows workflow from nicholas-fedor/watchtower, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

CI health: C - fair

Point runs-on at Latchkey and get run de-duplication, job timeouts, self-healing for flaky steps, and up to 58% lower cost, applied automatically.

Grade your own workflow free or run it on Latchkey →

Source: nicholas-fedor/watchtower.github/workflows/lint-gh.yamlLicense Apache-2.0View source

What it does

This is the Lint GitHub Actions Workflows workflow from the nicholas-fedor/watchtower repository, a real project running GitHub Actions. It is shown here with attribution under its Apache-2.0 license.

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

The workflow

workflow (.yml)

---
name: Lint GitHub Actions Workflows

on:
  workflow_dispatch: {}
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - main
    paths:
      - ".github/workflows/**"

permissions:
  contents: read # Set default read-only permissions

jobs:
  actionlint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Harden the Runner (Step Security)
        uses: step-security/harden-runner@bf7454d06d71f1098171f2acdf0cd4708d7b5920 # v2.20.0
        with:
          egress-policy: audit

      - name: Checkout Repo
        uses: actions/checkout@9c091bb21b7c1c1d1991bb908d89e4e9dddfe3e0 # v7.0.0
        with:
          persist-credentials: false

      - name: Run actionlint
        uses: nicholas-fedor/actionlint-action@b349ef9a439253e292855fc2b07b337a27bb2954 # v1.0.18

The same workflow, on Latchkey

Removes redundant runs and caps runaway jobs. Added and changed lines are highlighted.

---
name: Lint GitHub Actions Workflows
 
on:
  workflow_dispatch: {}
  pull_request:
    branches:
      - main
    paths:
      - ".github/workflows/**"
 
permissions:
  contents: read # Set default read-only permissions
 
concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true
 
jobs:
  actionlint:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - name: Harden the Runner (Step Security)
        uses: step-security/harden-runner@bf7454d06d71f1098171f2acdf0cd4708d7b5920 # v2.20.0
        with:
          egress-policy: audit
 
      - name: Checkout Repo
        uses: actions/checkout@9c091bb21b7c1c1d1991bb908d89e4e9dddfe3e0 # v7.0.0
        with:
          persist-credentials: false
 
      - name: Run actionlint
        uses: nicholas-fedor/actionlint-action@b349ef9a439253e292855fc2b07b337a27bb2954 # v1.0.18

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.
Cancel superseded runs when a branch or PR gets a newer push.
Add a job timeout so a hung step cannot burn hours of runner time.

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

step-security/harden-runner actions/checkout