Step
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
A step is the smallest unit of work in a pipeline — a single command or action. If a job is a recipe, steps are the individual instructions: 'crack eggs,' 'add flour,' 'mix together.' They run one after another inside a job, and if one step fails, the job stops.
Real Talk
A step is an individual task within a CI/CD job. Each step either runs a shell command (run:) or uses a pre-built action (uses:). Steps share the same filesystem and environment variables within a job, executing sequentially.
Show Me The Code
steps:
- name: Install dependencies
run: npm ci
- name: Run tests
run: npm test
- name: Build
run: npm run build
When You'll Hear This
"That step takes 3 minutes — can we cache it?" / "Add a step to run the linter before the tests."
Related Terms
Action
An action is a reusable mini-program that does one specific thing inside your pipeline. Instead of writing the same 20 lines to set up Node.
Job
A job is one chunk of work in your pipeline, running on its own machine.
Pipeline
A pipeline is like an assembly line at a factory.
Workflow
A workflow is a recipe for your robot assistant — it tells CI exactly what to do when something happens. 'When someone pushes code, run tests.