github-actions

---

title: "CI / GitHub Actions" description: "You can easily deploy your tasks with GitHub actions and other CI environments."

The instructions below are specific to GitHub Actions, but the same concepts can be used with other CI systems.

NOTE: Deployment workflow examples below are REFERENCE-ONLY. Secrets (TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN, DOCKERHUB_USERNAME, etc.) are placeholders. Replace with your own credentials and review security implications before use in production.

<Tip> Check out our new [GitHub integration](/github-integration) for automatic deployments, without adding any GitHub Actions workflows. </Tip>

GitHub Actions example

This simple GitHub action workflow will deploy your Trigger.dev tasks when new code is pushed to the main branch and the trigger directory has changes in it.

<Warning> The deploy step will fail if any version mismatches are detected. Please see the [version pinning](/github-actions#version-pinning) section for more details. </Warning> <CodeGroup>

name: Deploy to Trigger.dev (prod)

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Use Node.js 20.x
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: "20.x"

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install

      - name: 🚀 Deploy Trigger.dev
        env:
          TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          npx trigger.dev@latest deploy

name: Deploy to Trigger.dev (staging)

# Requires manually calling the workflow from a branch / commit to deploy to staging
on:
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Use Node.js 20.x
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: "20.x"

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install

      - name: 🚀 Deploy Trigger.dev
        env:
          TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
        run: |
          npx trigger.dev@latest deploy --env staging

</CodeGroup>

If you already have a GitHub action file, you can just add the final step "🚀 Deploy Trigger.dev" to your existing file.

Preview branches

To deploy to preview branches from Pull Requests and have them archived when PRs are merged or closed, use a workflow that runs on pull_request with all four types including closed:

name: Deploy to Trigger.dev (preview branches)

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened, closed]

jobs:
  deploy-preview:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Use Node.js 20.x
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: "20.x"

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install

      - name: Deploy preview branch
        run: npx trigger.dev@latest deploy --env preview
        env:
          TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN }}

<Note> **Include `closed`** in the `pull_request.types` list. Without it, preview branches won't be archived when PRs are merged or closed, and you may hit the limit on active preview branches. See [Preview branches](/deployment/preview-branches#preview-branches-with-github-actions-recommended) for more details. </Note>

Creating a Personal Access Token

<Steps> <Step title="Create a new access token"> Go to your profile page and click on the ["Personal Access Tokens"](https://cloud.trigger.dev/account/tokens) tab. </Step> <Step title="Go to your repository on GitHub."> Click on 'Settings' -> 'Secrets and variables' -> 'Actions' -> 'New repository secret' </Step> <Step title="Add the TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN"> Add the name `TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN` and the value of your access token.  </Step> </Steps>

CLI Version pinning

The CLI and @trigger.dev/* package versions need to be in sync with the trigger.dev CLI, otherwise there will be errors and unpredictable behavior. Hence, the deploy command will automatically fail during CI on any version mismatches. Tip: add the trigger.dev CLI to your devDependencies and the deploy command to your package.json file to keep versions managed in the same place. For example:

{
  "scripts": {
    "deploy:trigger-prod": "trigger deploy",
    "deploy:trigger": "trigger deploy --env staging"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "trigger.dev": "4.0.2"
  }
}

Your workflow file will follow the version specified in the package.json script, like so:

- name: 🚀 Deploy Trigger.dev
  env:
    TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
  run: |
    npm run deploy:trigger

You should use the version you run locally during dev and manual deploy. The current version is displayed in the banner, but you can also check it by appending --version to any command.

Self-hosting

When self-hosting, you need to:

• Set up Docker Buildx in your CI environment for building images locally.
• Add your registry credentials to the GitHub secrets.
• Specify the TRIGGER_API_URL environment variable pointing to your webapp domain, for example: https://trigger.example.com

<CodeGroup>

name: Deploy to Trigger.dev (self-hosted)

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Use Node.js 20.x
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: "20.x"

      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install

      - name: Set up Docker Buildx
        uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3
        with:
          version: latest

      - name: Login to DockerHub
        uses: docker/login-action@v3
        with:
          username: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_USERNAME }}
          password: ${{ secrets.DOCKERHUB_TOKEN }}

      - name: 🚀 Deploy Trigger.dev
        env:
          TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.TRIGGER_ACCESS_TOKEN }}
          TRIGGER_API_URL: ${{ secrets.TRIGGER_API_URL }}
        run: |
          npx trigger.dev@latest deploy

</CodeGroup>