Most GitHub Actions tutorials stop at 'run tests on push.' Real-world CI/CD needs more: matrix builds to test across Node versions, dependency caching to avoid 3-minute npm installs, reusable workflows to share pipelines across repos, and careful secrets management to avoid leaking credentials.

Caching That Actually Helps

The actions/cache action caches directories between runs. For Node, cache ~/.pnpm-store or node_modules keyed on your lockfile hash. For Turborepo, cache the .turbo directory. A cold install that takes 90 seconds becomes a 5-second cache restore.