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General PRD For GitHub Actions Automated Deployment

1. Document Purpose

This document defines a general set of requirements for automated build and deployment with GitHub Actions. It serves as a shared implementation baseline for future AI agents or developers.

The goal is to make different implementers follow the same structure, responsibility boundaries, and quality standards when adding automated deployment to a repository, reducing workflow drift caused by personal habits.

This PRD is not bound to one specific project. It describes general requirements for static documentation site deployment.

2. Goals

The target repository needs an independent, standard, and maintainable GitHub Actions workflow that satisfies these goals:

  • Automatically run build and deployment on GitHub.
  • Support automated publishing of a static documentation site.
  • Prefer compatibility with GitHub Pages.
  • Keep the workflow structure clear and easy to understand, maintain, and migrate.
  • Provide a reusable reference template for other repositories.

3. Scope

This PRD applies to these scenarios:

  • Automated build and deployment for static documentation sites.
  • Continuous integration and continuous deployment based on a GitHub repository.
  • Decoupled management of documentation engineering and automated deployment.
  • Shared GitHub Actions implementation constraints for other AI agents.

This PRD does not require coverage for business application releases, container orchestration, complex multi-environment releases, or custom infrastructure deployment.

4. General Requirements

4.1 Independence

  • The GitHub Actions deployment solution should be defined independently.
  • The automation process should focus on documentation site build and deployment, without unrelated business workflows.
  • Workflow responsibilities should be clear and singular, avoiding one file that carries too many unrelated tasks.

4.2 Reusability

  • The workflow design should not depend on project-specific business terminology.
  • It should not rely on hardcoded constraints outside the documentation project structure, unless those constraints are common to static documentation sites.
  • The output should be reusable and portable to other repositories.

4.3 Stability

  • Prefer official GitHub actions or stable community actions.
  • Minimize unnecessary custom scripts.
  • The workflow should run under the normal GitHub repository permission model.

5. Workflow Responsibility Requirements

The automation workflow should cover at least these responsibilities:

  • Trigger after relevant code or documentation changes.
  • Support manual triggering.
  • Check out repository code.
  • Prepare the runtime environment.
  • Install documentation build dependencies.
  • Build the documentation site.
  • Upload the build artifact.
  • Deploy the static site to the target hosting platform.

6. Trigger Strategy Requirements

6.1 Automatic Triggering

  • The workflow should run automatically after updates to the main branch.
  • It should not trigger for every push on the main branch by default.
  • It must first restrict triggers to documentation-related changes to reduce unnecessary runs.
  • Use paths or an equivalent mechanism to limit the trigger scope to documentation source files, documentation configuration, the documentation deployment workflow, and a small set of clearly defined documentation entry files.
  • Trigger path design should reflect clear documentation engineering boundaries.

6.2 Manual Triggering

  • The workflow should support workflow_dispatch.
  • Manual triggering is used for debugging, redeployment, and manual verification.

6.3 Trigger Control

  • Consider concurrency control to avoid duplicate deployments overwriting each other.
  • If a concurrency group is used, its behavior should be predictable and semantically clear.

7. Build Requirements

7.1 Runtime Environment

  • Use a stable and mainstream runtime version.
  • Environment setup steps should be clear and readable.
  • Do not introduce significant complexity for minor optimization.

7.2 Dependency Installation

  • The dependency installation method should be explicit and stable.
  • Use the documentation project dependency manifest instead of relying on an implicit external environment.
  • Dependency sources and installation steps should be understandable to maintainers.

7.3 Build Execution

  • Build commands should be direct, clear, and reproducible.
  • Build failures should expose the problem clearly instead of being silently skipped.
  • If the build tool supports a strict mode, prefer enabling it to catch documentation issues early.

8. Deployment Requirements

8.1 Deployment Target

  • Prefer GitHub Pages.
  • If the project later moves to another static hosting platform, the overall process should remain easy to migrate.

8.2 Artifact Handling

  • Build artifacts should be separated from source responsibilities.
  • Upload and publish artifacts through standardized steps.
  • Do not tightly couple deployment logic to documentation source organization.

8.3 Permissions

  • Workflow permissions should follow the least-privilege principle.
  • Grant only the permissions required for build and deployment.
  • Do not configure permissions that clearly exceed the documentation deployment scenario.

9. Maintainability Requirements

9.1 Readability

  • Workflow file names should be clear.
  • Job and step names should be semantically explicit.
  • Maintainers should quickly understand the responsibility of each step.

9.2 Portability

  • The workflow should not deeply couple to one repository's business logic.
  • Migration to another project should require only a small number of changes.

9.3 Extensibility

  • Future additions may include prechecks, link checking, formatting checks, or multi-version deployments.
  • This version does not require stacking complex CI/CD capabilities at once.

10. Non-Functional Requirements

10.1 Simplicity

  • The solution should remain simple and direct.
  • Do not add unrelated steps only to make the workflow look complete.

10.2 Consistency

  • Workflow naming, step organization, and comment style should be consistent.
  • The automation solution should match the documentation project structure.

10.3 Reliability

  • The workflow should behave reliably for common documentation publishing scenarios.
  • Avoid fragile temporary scripts or implicit dependencies.

11. Deliverables

When implementing this PRD, deliver at least:

  • A GitHub Actions workflow file.
  • Clear build step definitions.
  • Clear deployment step definitions.
  • Trigger rules that match the documentation project.
  • Required permission configuration.
  • Brief explanatory documentation or comments.

12. Acceptance Criteria

The task is complete when:

  1. The repository has an independent GitHub Actions workflow file.
  2. The workflow can automatically trigger after relevant main-branch changes.
  3. The workflow supports manual triggering.
  4. The workflow can complete checkout, environment setup, dependency installation, and build.
  5. The workflow can upload and deploy static artifacts.
  6. The deployment target is preferably compatible with GitHub Pages.
  7. The workflow structure is clear and maintainable.
  8. The workflow has reuse value for other repositories.

13. Implementation Constraints

Implementers must follow these constraints:

  • Do not write a workflow that only fits one special repository.
  • Do not force documentation-unrelated CI/CD tasks into the same workflow.
  • Do not configure deployment to trigger on arbitrary code changes.
  • Do not omit manual triggering.
  • Do not omit the basic build and deployment chain.
  • Do not introduce complexity clearly beyond the requirement scope.

14. Direct Instructions For Implementers

Based on this PRD, design and implement a GitHub Actions automated build and deployment solution for the target repository. Requirements:

  • Focus on static documentation site build and deployment.
  • Support automatic main-branch triggering.
  • Support manual triggering.
  • Prefer GitHub Pages compatibility.
  • Use a clear, stable, maintainable workflow structure.
  • Minimize project-specific logic.
  • Produce an implementation with reuse value.

15. Expected Result

The final result should be an automated deployment solution with clear responsibilities, simple structure, automatic execution, and long-term maintainability.

The solution should satisfy these purposes:

  • The current repository can adopt automated deployment directly.
  • Other repositories can reuse similar implementations in the future.
  • Other AI agents can generate or modify workflows using the same standard.
  • Team members can quickly understand and maintain the workflow.