Cancelling and Skipping Workflows

Optimize your continuous integration (CI) pipeline by learning how to prevent unnecessary GitHub Actions runs and how to stop jobs that are already in progress. This guide covers:

• How to skip workflows using commit-message directives
• How to cancel an in-progress workflow from the GitHub UI

Skipping Workflow Runs via Commit Messages

By including specific keywords in your commit messages, you can tell GitHub Actions to bypass workflow triggers for push and pull_request events. This is particularly useful when making non-code changes like documentation updates.

Example: Skipping Workflows for Documentation Changes

When you update files like README.md, you often don’t need to rebuild or redeploy your application. Here’s how to skip CI for pure documentation commits:

1. Edit your documentation file:

   git add README.md
   git commit -m "Refresh markdown formatting [ci skip]"
   

2. Push the commit:

   git push origin main
   

3. Confirm no workflows ran by checking the Actions tab in your repository.

Cancelling an In-Progress Workflow

If you realize a running workflow is no longer needed—perhaps it was triggered by mistake or contains a broken job—you can cancel it in just a few clicks:

1. Go to the Actions tab in your GitHub repository.
2. Click the workflow run that’s currently in progress.
3. Hit Cancel workflow in the upper-right corner of the run details page.

Your job will be immediately terminated, freeing up your runner capacity.

Links and References

• GitHub Actions Documentation
• Commit Message Guidelines
• GitHub Actions: Skipping Workflows