Publish Stable workflow (shipshapecode/tether)

The Publish Stable workflow from shipshapecode/tether, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

What it does

This is the Publish Stable workflow from the shipshapecode/tether 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

# For every push to the primary branch with .release-plan.json modified,
# runs release-plan.

name: Publish Stable

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
      - master
    paths:
      - '.release-plan.json'

concurrency:
  group: publish-${{ github.head_ref || github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true

jobs:
  publish:
    name: "NPM Publish"
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
      id-token: write
      attestations: write

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
      - uses: pnpm/action-setup@v4
        with:
          version: 10
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v6
        with:
          node-version: 20
          registry-url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org'
          cache: pnpm
      - run: pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
      - run: npm install -g npm@latest # ensure that the globally installed npm is new enough to support OIDC
      - name: Publish to NPM
        run: NPM_CONFIG_PROVENANCE=true pnpm release-plan publish
        env:
          GITHUB_AUTH: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

The same workflow, on Latchkey

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

# For every push to the primary branch with .release-plan.json modified,
# runs release-plan.
 
name: Publish Stable
 
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
      - master
    paths:
      - '.release-plan.json'
 
concurrency:
  group: publish-${{ github.head_ref || github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true
 
jobs:
  publish:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    name: "NPM Publish"
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    permissions:
      contents: write
      id-token: write
      attestations: write
 
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v5
      - uses: pnpm/action-setup@v4
        with:
          version: 10
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v6
        with:
          node-version: 20
          registry-url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org'
          cache: pnpm
      - run: pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
      - run: npm install -g npm@latest # ensure that the globally installed npm is new enough to support OIDC
      - name: Publish to NPM
        run: NPM_CONFIG_PROVENANCE=true pnpm release-plan publish
        env:
          GITHUB_AUTH: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
 

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.
• Add a job timeout so a hung step cannot burn hours of runner time.

1 third-party action is referenced by a movable tag. Pin it to the commit SHA (Latchkey resolves and applies this automatically) so a repointed tag cannot change what runs.

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