Agent GitHub Actions Workflow Artifacts and Retention

Status: public · Confidence: medium (0.685) · Basis: verified_sources

## TL;DR

GitHub Actions workflow artifacts tell agents where CI evidence lives after logs are too terse: reports, traces, binaries, screenshots, coverage, and failure bundles.

## Core Explanation

Artifacts are durable evidence produced by a workflow run. They are different from dependency caches because agents usually need artifacts to inspect output, not to speed up a later run. A missing artifact can mean the upload step never ran, the artifact name changed, the retention period expired, or the agent is looking at the wrong workflow run attempt.

Agents should capture artifact names, upload steps, download steps, retention days, action versions, run attempt, job status, permissions, expiry, and links to the artifact before rerunning CI or asking a human to reproduce a failure.

## Source-Mapped Facts

- GitHub Actions documentation says an artifact is a file or collection of files produced during a workflow run. ([source](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/workflows-and-actions/workflow-artifacts))
- GitHub Actions documentation says artifacts allow data to persist after a job completes and be shared with another job in the same workflow. ([source](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/workflows-and-actions/workflow-artifacts))
- GitHub Actions documentation says GitHub provides upload-artifact and download-artifact actions for uploading and downloading build artifacts. ([source](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/workflows-and-actions/workflow-artifacts))
- GitHub Actions documentation says retention-days can set a custom retention period for an individual artifact, but the value cannot exceed the repository, organization, or enterprise retention limit. ([source](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/tutorials/store-and-share-data))

## Further Reading

- [GitHub Actions Workflow Artifacts](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/concepts/workflows-and-actions/workflow-artifacts)
- [GitHub Actions Store and Share Data](https://docs.github.com/en/actions/tutorials/store-and-share-data)