Github Workflow syntax and structure

[sudoUgando]

What's the difference between jobs.<job_id>.steps[].uses and jobs.<job_id>.steps[].run? When should you use one over the other?

[EimanTahir027]

What's the difference between jobs.<job_id>.steps[].uses and jobs.<job_id>.steps[].run? When should you use one over the other?

These are both keys used in a GitHub Actions workflow file, inside a job's steps array.

jobs.<job_id>.steps[].uses
This references an external action — a pre-built unit of work published to the GitHub Marketplace, a public repository, or a Docker image. You point to it like:

yaml

• uses: actions/checkout@v4
• uses: docker://alpine:latest
  GitHub downloads and executes that action's code. You use uses when someone else has already written the logic (checking out code, setting up a language runtime, deploying to AWS, etc.) and you just want to call it with some inputs.

jobs.<job_id>.steps[].run
This lets you execute arbitrary shell commands directly on the runner. You provide the command as a string:

yaml

• run: npm install
• run: |
  echo "Hello"
  ls -la
  You use run when you need to do something custom that doesn't exist as a reusable action — running a build script, moving files around, running tests with specific flags, or any one-off shell logic.