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Athanor supports a practical subset of GitHub Actions workflow syntax — enough to run most CI pipelines that don’t depend on marketplace actions.

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run: Steps

Every step must have a run: field containing a shell script. Multi-line scripts work with YAML block scalars: 
- name: Multi-line script
  run: |
    echo "line 1"
    echo "line 2"
    exit 0
Scripts are written to a temp file and executed with bash (or the configured shell:).

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shell: Override

- name: Use sh instead
  run: echo "hello"
  shell: sh
Or set a default for the whole job: 
jobs:
  build:
    defaults:
      run:
        shell: sh

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working-directory:

Set per-step or as a job default: 
- name: Build in subdir
  run: make build
  working-directory: ./frontend
Relative paths are resolved against the workflow file’s parent directory.

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env: at Every Level

Environment variables cascade: workflow → job → step. Each level can override variables from the level above. 
env:
  APP: myapp
jobs:
  build:
    env:
      ENV: production
    steps:
      - env:
          DEBUG: "true"
        run: echo "$APP $ENV $DEBUG"

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id: and $GITHUB_OUTPUT

Steps can produce outputs that later steps reference: 
- id: check
  run: echo "status=ready" >> "$GITHUB_OUTPUT"
- run: echo "${{ steps.check.outputs.status }}"
The $GITHUB_OUTPUT file is created per-step and parsed after the step exits.

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if: Conditions

Three built-in functions control whether a step runs:
ConditionRuns when
success() (default)No previous step in this job has failed
failure()A previous step in this job has failed
always()Always, regardless of prior step status
- name: Cleanup
  if: always()
  run: rm -rf tmp/

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continue-on-error:

When true, a non-zero exit code from this step does not mark the job as failed, and subsequent steps continue executing under success() conditions: 
- name: Optional lint
  run: golangci-lint run
  continue-on-error: true
- name: This still runs
  run: echo "lint failure is fine"

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needs: Job Dependencies

See the dedicated Job Dependencies guide.