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World C3: Release & Deploy

Quiet, useful alerts

You will learn: which pipeline events deserve a ping, and what a useful alert says.

Checked with GitHub Actions 2026-10 on 31 Oct 2026

The problem

Your phone buzzes 80 times a day: “Build passed!” Which messages are worth a ping? Swipe right for “ping me”.

Swipe right for good, left for needs work. Or use the buttons.

1 / 4

Production deploy failed.

Watch

Too many pings cause alert fatigue: So many pings that people stop reading them. Then the one real alarm gets missed.: people stop reading them. What happens next?

Watch

A useful alert says what broke, where, and how to see more. Tap the line that takes you to the details.

Tap the line that takes you to the details.

0 of 1 found

Try it

This workflow opens one GitHub issue, only when the deploy fails. The issue links to the run. Run it, then tap the notify station.

Pick an event. Press Run and watch the line.

The smoke test fails, so the notify job opens one issue with the run link.

What happened on GitHub

Workflow file .github/workflows/deploy.yml

name: Deploy
on:
push:
branches: [main]
permissions:
contents: read
jobs:
deploy:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- uses: actions/checkout@v7
- run: npm ci
- run: npm run deploy
env:
CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN }}
- run: curl --fail --silent https://shop.example.com/health
notify:
needs: deploy
if: failure()
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
permissions:
issues: write
steps:
- run: gh issue create --repo "$REPO" --title "Deploy failed" --body "$RUN_URL"
env:
GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
REPO: ${{ github.repository }}
RUN_URL: ${{ github.server_url }}/${{ github.repository }}/actions/runs/${{ github.run_id }}

The line

Push to main · main

Predict

Tomorrow the deploy is healthy. What does the notify job do?

Check

Where should each message go?

Drag a card into a box. Or tap the card, then tap the box.

      You did it!

      You can now send alerts people will actually read.

      Go deeper (optional)

      Where the story breaks: a van can’t take back a meal. But code rolls back in seconds. Yet a rollback brings back old code, not old data. Orders the bad version saved stay saved.

      Real rep (optional): turn on “Only notify for failed workflows” in GitHub settings.