Using continue on error expression

GitHub Actions’ continue-on-error expression lets you prevent failures in a specific step or an entire job from aborting your workflow. You can use this setting to:

• Handle non-critical errors without stopping downstream steps.
• Upload logs and artifacts even when tests or checks fail.
• Experiment with unstable configurations in a matrix without blocking the run.

Below is an overview of how continue-on-error behaves at each level:

Continue-on-error at the Step Level

When you set continue-on-error: true on a step, a non-zero exit code won’t fail the job. This is ideal for allowing post-test uploads or cleanup steps to run even if tests or coverage checks fail.

In this example, the Code Coverage job executes tests, enforces a coverage threshold, and then uploads the report regardless of success or failure.

# .github/workflows/coverage.yml
jobs:
  code-coverage:
    name: Code Coverage
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Setup Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: 18

      - name: Install Dependencies
        run: npm install

      - name: Check Code Coverage
        continue-on-error: true
        run: npm run coverage

      - name: Archive Coverage Report
        uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
        with:
          name: Code-Coverage-Result
          path: coverage
          retention-days: 5

Example output when coverage fails:

> nyc --reporter cobertura --reporter lcov --reporter text --reporter json-summary mocha app-test.js --timeout 10000 --exit

ERROR: Coverage for lines (88.8%) does not meet global threshold (90%)
...
Error: Process completed with exit code 1

Despite the exit code, the Archive Coverage Report step proceeds and your artifact is saved.

Continue-on-error at the Job Level

Applying continue-on-error on a job prevents that job from failing the entire workflow run. This is useful for matrix jobs where you want an “experimental” axis to fail quietly.

# .github/workflows/main.yml
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    continue-on-error: ${{ matrix.experimental }}
    strategy:
      fail-fast: false
      matrix:
        node: [13, 14]
        os: [macos-latest, ubuntu-latest]
        experimental: [false]
      include:
        - node: 15
          os: ubuntu-latest
          experimental: true
    steps:
      - name: Checkout Repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Setup Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v3
        with:
          node-version: ${{ matrix.node }}

      # ... additional test steps ...

Here, any job with matrix.experimental: true will not block the workflow on failure.

Below is the workflow summary, showing completed unit tests, a coverage job with an error, and the uploaded artifacts:

Links and References

• GitHub Actions Workflow Syntax: continue-on-error
• GitHub Actions: Uploading Artifacts
• nyc Code Coverage Tool