This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Francesco Bianco
“Run your GitHub Actions locally!” — ACT
“Why would you want to do that?” — Me, genuinely wondering
We live in an era where Continuous Integration (CI) — one of the most mature and battle-tested DevOps practices — is constantly being reinvented and reinterpreted. And then comes ACT, a popular tool that lets you run GitHub Actions locally.
How convenient, right?
Wrong. It's the symptom, not the cure.
The Dream Gone Wrong: CI as a Fancy Makefile
ACT was born out of a real frustration: testing GitHub workflow files is painful. Commit, push, wait, fail, repeat. We've all been there.
So someone thought: “Let’s run it locally!”
And boom, ACT was born.
But here’s the kicker: you’ve completely misunderstood what CI is supposed to be.
CI is not part of your development loop.
CI is not a fancy Makefile.
CI is not something you “test until it works and then push.”
CI is a gate.
CI is the external referee.
CI is the “Stop. This isn’t ready. Fix it before it hits the repo.”
The Anti-Pattern: Turning CI into a Dev Loop
When you use ACT to “test” your GitHub Actions workflows before pushing, you’re not optimizing — you’re subverting the entire purpose of CI.
CI is not here to help your code pass.
It’s here to block your code when it shouldn’t pass.
If you need to test your CI pipeline endlessly before pushing, then one of these is true:
- Your CI is overly complex.
- Your CI is too fragile.
- Your CI lacks modularity and good design.
And that’s not a tooling issue — that’s a design flaw.
CI Failures Are Bugs — Compensatory Bugs
Let me say this loud and clear:
CI failures are not annoyances — they are bugs.
Not in your code, but in your process.
When your CI fails in production but passes locally, you’ve written compensatory logic. You’re covering up deeper issues with fragile CI setups that can’t scale or generalize.
ACT lets you hide from those failures. It lets you live in the illusion of “it worked locally, so it should work on GitHub too.”
That illusion is dangerous.
ACT Isn’t the Problem — Misuse Is
To be clear: ACT isn’t evil. It’s actually quite elegant.
It’s useful in emergencies, debugging, or extremely isolated edge cases.
But using it as part of your regular development flow?
That’s like testing the fire alarm with a match and saying, “See? It beeped.”
You’ve completely missed the point.
So What Should You Do Instead?
-
Design simpler workflows. Don’t shove your entire pipeline into
yamlhell. - Use modular, testable shell scripts that your CI orchestrates, not defines.
- Embrace CI failures as red flags, not hurdles.
- Use ACT as a microscope, not as a mirror.
Final Thought
ACT is another example of devs chasing convenience over correctness.
It’s appealing, sure. But it betrays the whole point of what CI is supposed to be.
So next time you “run your CI locally,” ask yourself:
Are you solving the real problem — or just hiding from it?
Because if you need to run your CI locally to make sure it passes…
You’ve already failed.
Flame on.
This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Francesco Bianco
Francesco Bianco | Sciencx (2025-04-24T23:30:14+00:00) If You Run Your CI Locally, You’ve Already Failed. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2025/04/24/if-you-run-your-ci-locally-youve-already-failed/
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