Publish to npm workflow (yeoman/yo)

The Publish to npm workflow from yeoman/yo, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

What it does

This is the Publish to npm workflow from the yeoman/yo repository, a real project running GitHub Actions. It is shown here with attribution under its BSD-2-Clause license.

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

The workflow

name: Publish to npm

on:
  release:
    types: [published]

permissions:
  contents: read
  id-token: write # Required for npm provenance

jobs:
  publish:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6

      - uses: actions/setup-node@v6
        with:
          node-version: '24'
          registry-url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org'

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci

      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test

      - name: Publish with provenance
        run: npm publish --provenance --access public

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: Publish to npm
 
on:
  release:
    types: [published]
 
permissions:
  contents: read
  id-token: write # Required for npm provenance
 
jobs:
  publish:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
 
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v6
        with:
          cache: 'npm'
          node-version: '24'
          registry-url: 'https://registry.npmjs.org'
 
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci
 
      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test
 
      - name: Publish with provenance
        run: npm publish --provenance --access public
 

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