documentation workflow (showdownjs/showdown)

The documentation workflow from showdownjs/showdown, 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: showdownjs/showdown.github/workflows/docs.ymlLicense MITView source

What it does

This is the documentation workflow from the showdownjs/showdown 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

workflow (.yml)

name: documentation

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
    paths:
      - 'mkdocs.yml'
      - 'docs/**'
      - '.github/workflows/docs.yml'

permissions:
  contents: read

jobs:
  build_docs:
    name: Build documentation
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@34e114876b0b11c390a56381ad16ebd13914f8d5 # v4.3.1

      - name: Trigger external build
        env:
          TOKEN: ${{ secrets.DOCS_DEPLOY_KEY }}
          COMMIT: ${{ github.event.head_commit.id }}
          COMMITTER: ${{ github.event.head_commit.author.username }}
          OWNER: showdownjs
          REPO: showdownjs.github.io
        run: |
          # Build the JSON payload with jq so the GitHub-controlled COMMIT/COMMITTER
          # values are properly escaped (no shell/JSON injection into the request body).
          PAYLOAD=$(jq -n --arg et "e: \"${COMMIT}\" by ${COMMITTER}" \
            '{event_type: $et, client_payload: {source: "showdown"}}')
          curl -X POST \
          -H "Authorization: token ${TOKEN}" \
          -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" \
          https://api.github.com/repos/${OWNER}/${REPO}/dispatches \
          --data-binary "${PAYLOAD}"

The same workflow, on Latchkey

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

name: documentation
 
on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
    paths:
      - 'mkdocs.yml'
      - 'docs/**'
      - '.github/workflows/docs.yml'
 
permissions:
  contents: read
 
concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true
 
jobs:
  build_docs:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    name: Build documentation
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@34e114876b0b11c390a56381ad16ebd13914f8d5 # v4.3.1
 
      - name: Trigger external build
        env:
          TOKEN: ${{ secrets.DOCS_DEPLOY_KEY }}
          COMMIT: ${{ github.event.head_commit.id }}
          COMMITTER: ${{ github.event.head_commit.author.username }}
          OWNER: showdownjs
          REPO: showdownjs.github.io
        run: |
          # Build the JSON payload with jq so the GitHub-controlled COMMIT/COMMITTER
          # values are properly escaped (no shell/JSON injection into the request body).
          PAYLOAD=$(jq -n --arg et "e: \"${COMMIT}\" by ${COMMITTER}" \
            '{event_type: $et, client_payload: {source: "showdown"}}')
          curl -X POST \
          -H "Authorization: token ${TOKEN}" \
          -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" \
          https://api.github.com/repos/${OWNER}/${REPO}/dispatches \
          --data-binary "${PAYLOAD}"

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.

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:

Network fetches

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

actions/checkout