GitHub Actions GH-200 certification exam topics

The GitHub Actions GH-200 certification validates your ability to build, run, and manage automation workflows for CI/CD on GitHub.

This exam is designed for DevOps engineers, software developers, and IT professionals with intermediate experience in Actions, including workflow creation, automation, and CI/CD pipeline management.

Most questions focus on generally available features, and some may include commonly used preview features. The certification is maintained by GitHub and delivered by Microsoft through Pearson VUE.

Exam Design

The GH-200 exam measures your ability to author, consume, and administer GitHub Actions at team and enterprise scale. You should be comfortable reading workflow YAML, diagnosing failures, handling artifacts and logs, and applying policy and security controls.

Domains and Weightings

• Author and Maintain Workflows: 40%
• Consume Workflows: 20%
• Author and Maintain Actions: 25%
• Manage Actions in the Enterprise: 15%

Domain	Description	Weight
1. Author and Maintain Workflows	Triggers, syntax, jobs and steps, conditionals, runner communication, secrets, env vars, packages, containers, CodeQL, releases, and cloud deployments.	40%
2. Consume Workflows	Understand effects and logs, diagnose failures, cache dependencies, pass data between jobs, artifacts, matrices, approvals, protections, and templated workflows.	20%
3. Author and Maintain Actions	Choose action type, JS vs Docker, files and metadata, workflow commands, and troubleshooting for custom actions.	25%
4. Manage Actions in the Enterprise	Reusable templates, distribution and access control, organizational policies, runner groups, IP allow lists, and secret scopes.	15%

Domain Highlights

1: Author and Maintain Workflows

• Trigger workflows with push, pull_request, schedule, workflow_dispatch, and webhook events like check_run or deployment
• Write valid YAML with correct indentation, jobs, steps, and if conditionals; model dependent jobs and matrices
• Use run steps for shell commands and workflow commands to communicate with the runner
• Secure pipelines with secrets, env, default environment variables, and GITHUB_TOKEN
• Publish to GitHub Packages and GitHub Container Registry; use service containers and labels to route jobs
• Add CodeQL scanning as a step, create releases, and deploy to cloud providers from workflows

2: Consume Workflows

• Identify the triggering event from changes in a repo, issue, or pull request, or from the workflow YAML
• Find and analyze logs in the UI and through the REST API; enable step debug logging
• Configure dependency caching, pass data between jobs, remove artifacts, and add a status badge
• Define job matrices, approvals, and environment protections; locate workflows, artifacts, and templated configs

3: Author and Maintain Actions

• Choose the right action type for the job: JavaScript, Docker container, or a simple run step
• Structure files and metadata correctly, including action.yml inputs and outputs
• Implement workflow commands and exit codes inside custom actions and troubleshoot both JS and Docker actions

4: Manage Actions in the Enterprise

• Distribute actions and workflows with reusable templates and clear naming conventions
• Control access to internal actions and configure organization policies for Actions usage
• Select appropriate runners, manage self-hosted runner groups, networking, labels, and proxies
• Monitor, troubleshoot, and update runners; manage secret scopes at org and repo levels

How to practice for the Exam

If you’d like to get started preparing for the GitHub Foundations exam, start by working through the hundreds of free certification exam questions here:

Free GitHub Actions GH-900 Practice Exams

For those interested in a GitHub Actions course, the official Udemy GitHub Actions Practice Tests are highly recommended. GitHub Foundations and GitHub Copilot Udemy exams are also available for those who want to obtain a trifecta of GitHub certifications.

Key Details at a Glance

• Level: Intermediate
• Product: GitHub Actions
• Domains: 4
• Validity: 2 years
• Provider: GitHub (administered by Microsoft)