5.5Conditional Execution

Skip expensive work when it is not needed.

Path-Based Filtering

# Skip tests when only documentation changed
on:
  push:
    paths-ignore:
      - '**.md'
      - 'docs/**'
      - '.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/**'
      - 'LICENSE'

# Only run backend tests when backend code changed
on:
  push:
    paths:
      - 'src/api/**'
      - 'src/services/**'
      - 'tests/integration/**'

Job-Level Conditions

# Only run browser tests on PRs targeting main
browser-tests:
  if: github.event_name == 'pull_request' && github.base_ref == 'main'

# Skip expensive tests for draft PRs
e2e-tests:
  if: github.event.pull_request.draft == false

Step-Level Conditions

# Only upload artifacts on failure
- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  if: failure()

# Only run deployment on main branch
- run: npm run deploy
  if: github.ref == 'refs/heads/main'