CI Automation

When to Use

• Running GitHub Actions workflows locally before pushing
• Creating or running project task recipes (build, test, deploy)
• Generating changelogs from conventional commit history
• Creating GitHub releases with auto-generated release notes
• Managing GitHub PRs, issues, or Actions runs programmatically
• Creating encrypted backups before destructive operations

Tools

Patterns

Run a specific GitHub Actions job locally

act -j build

Run Actions with a specific event trigger

act push

Run Actions with secrets from .env file

act --secret-file .env -j test

List available Actions workflows and jobs

act -l

Run Actions with specific platform image

act -P ubuntu-latest=catthehacker/ubuntu:act-latest

Create a Justfile with common recipes

Create Justfile:

# List available recipes
default:
    @just --list

# Run tests
test:
    pytest -v

# Lint and format
lint:
    ruff check --fix .
    ruff format .

# Build and tag Docker image
build tag="latest":
    docker build -t myapp:{{tag}} .

# Deploy to staging
deploy-staging: test lint
    ./scripts/deploy.sh staging

Run a just recipe

just test

Run recipe with arguments

just build v1.2.3

List available recipes

just --list

Generate changelog for all history

git-cliff --output CHANGELOG.md

Generate changelog for latest release only

git-cliff --latest

Generate changelog since a specific tag

git-cliff --tag v1.0.0..HEAD

Generate changelog with

Data Processing

When to Use

• Querying, filtering, or transforming JSON files
• Reading or converting YAML, TOML, or XML config files
• Analyzing, aggregating, or joining CSV/TSV/Parquet files
• Running SQL queries against local data files without a database server
• Converting between data formats (JSON to YAML, CSV to JSON, etc.)
• Exploring deeply nested JSON structures

Tools

Patterns

JSON: Filter array elements by field value

jq '.items[] | select(.status == "active")' data.json

JSON: Extract specific fields from array

jq '[.users[] | {name: .name, email: .email}]' data.json

JSON: Count items grouped by field

jq '[.events[] | .type] | group_by(.) | map({type: .[0], count: length})' data.json

YAML: Read a nested value

yq '.spec.containers[0].image' deployment.yaml

YAML: Convert entire file to JSON

yq -o json config.yaml

TOML: Read a value

yq -p toml '.database.host' config.toml

JSON: Explore unknown structure by grepping paths

gron data.json | grep -i "error"

CSV: Column statistics (min, max, mean, stddev)

xsv stats data.csv | xsv table

CSV: Search rows matching a pattern in a column

xsv search -s status "active" data.csv

CSV: Select specific columns

xsv select name,email,created_at users.csv

CSV: Sort by column

xsv sort -s revenue -R sales.csv

SQL: Query a CSV file<

Python Tooling

When to Use

• Installing Python packages or creating virtual environments
• Running Python scripts with dependency isolation
• Linting Python code for errors, style issues, or import sorting
• Formatting Python code consistently
• Managing Python project dependencies (pyproject.toml)
• Auto-fixing Python lint issues

Tools

Patterns

Create a virtual environment

uv venv

Create venv with specific Python version

uv venv --python 3.12

Install packages into current venv

uv pip install requests pandas numpy

Install from requirements.txt

uv pip install -r requirements.txt

Run a script with auto-managed dependencies

uv run --with requests --with beautifulsoup4 script.py

Run a script with inline dependencies (PEP 723)

uv run script.py

Where script.py has:

# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.12"
# dependencies = ["requests", "rich"]
# ///

Initialize a new Python project

uv init myproject
cd myproject
uv add requests

Add a dependency to pyproject.toml

uv add fastapi uvicorn

Add a dev dependency

uv add --dev pytest pytest-cov

Lint Python code with JSON output

ruff check --output-format json .

Lint and show only errors (no warnings)

ruff check --select E .

Auto-fix all fixable lint issues

ruff check --fix .

Format Python code

ruff format .

Check formatting without changing files

ruff format --check .

Lint specific rules (e.g., unused imports + isort)

ruff check --select F401,I .

Pipelines

New project → install deps → lint → format

uv init myproject && cd myproject
uv add requests fastapi
ruff