GitHub Agentic Workflows — Field Guide

Tenets

The design principles every workflow must consider and strive to satisfy. These tenets inform the usage guidelines and recommendations throughout this guide.

Read the Tenets →

Triggers

A reference for triggers used in traditional GitHub Workflows and in GitHub Agentic Workflows (gh-aw), covering how security and other tenets apply to each trigger. Scenarios, high-level guidance, and notable pitfalls.

Study the Common Triggers →

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More Thoughts

1. The “Approve and run workflows” Gate — the gate is dangerous, not protective.
2. The “Apparent vs. Actual” Trigger Surface — why “skipped” runs are not free.
3. Operating Within a Fork — what fires when you operate inside your own fork, and the if: workflow_dispatch || not-a-fork guard.
4. Concurrency and Race Conditions — the non-matching-cancels-matching pathology, the pre-cancellation race.
5. Authorization, Roles, and Read-Only Contributors — on.roles: defaults, the read-only / fork-contributor capability matrix.

Appendices

• Trigger-by-Trigger Risk Profile — the all-triggers reference table including ones with no standalone page.