Act III opens with the CI plumbing under every headless Claude Code run. The frame: each GitHub Actions primitive covers a failure mode a human would otherwise handle live. Claude Code GitHub Actions is built on the Claude Agent SDK and runs on GitHub's own runners.
News
--add-dir (#1256), propagate curl install failures (#1241). (release notes)/config; workflow.run_id / workflow.name OpenTelemetry attributes; /review back to single-pass, multi-agent moved to /code-review.--permission-mode in CI.Tutorial: GitHub Actions foundations
Workflow anatomy (on, permissions, jobs, runs-on, steps). Triggers: workflow_dispatch, schedule/cron (UTC, 5-min min, default-branch only, 60-day public auto-disable), repository_dispatch, issues/pull_request (synchronize), workflow_call. Jobs run in isolated VMs — matrix, needs, if, and outputs pass state. Secrets vs variables vs environment secrets. The Feb 2023 read-only GITHUB_TOKEN shift and the permissions: allowlist (unlisted scopes become none; id-token: write required for OIDC). Full AWS OIDC auth with the sub-claim security lever. Concurrency groups, timeout-minutes (360-min default), and caching. Pitfalls: GITHUB_TOKEN can't trigger downstream CI, silent 403s, pull_request_target injection, the 6-hour burn, fork PRs lack secrets, OIDC sub mismatch, and silently disabled crons. Pin actions to full SHAs.