72,625
stars
+28+106+362
2,117
forks
202
watchers
1,503
prs
1,360
issues
105
releases
230
discussions
README
Overview "Think globally, act locally" Run your GitHub Actions locally! Why would you want to do this? Two reasons: - Fast Feedback - Rather than having to commit/push every time you want to test out the changes you are making to your .github/workflows/ files (or for any changes to embedded GitHub actions), you can use act to run the actions locally. The environment variables and filesystem are all configured to match what GitHub provides. - Local Task Runner - I love make). However, I also hate repeating myself. With act, you can use the GitHub Actions defined in your .github/workflows/ to replace your Makefile! [!TIP] Now Manage and Run Act Directly From VS Code! Check out the GitHub Local Actions Visual Studio Code extension which allows you to leverage the power of act to run and test workflows locally without leaving your editor. How Does It Work? When you run act it reads in your GitHub Actions from .github/workflows/ and determines the set of actions that need to be run. It uses the Docker API to either pull or build the necessary images, as defined in your workflow files and finally determines the execution path based on the dependencies that were defined. Once it has the execution path, it then uses the Docker API to run containers for each action based on the images prepared earlier. The environment variables and filesystem are all configured to match what GitHub provides. Let's see it in action with a sample repo! !Demo Act User Guide Please look at the act user guide for more documentation. Support Need help? Ask in discussions! Contributing Want to contribute to act? Awesome! Check out the contributing guidelines to get involved. Manually building from source - Install Go (version in go.mod, currently 1.26.0) - () - Clone this repo git clone [email protected]:nektos/act.git - Run unit tests with make test (requires Docker) - Run fast tests without Docker with make test-fast - Build and install: make install
Top issues
#107command not found (in image node:12.6-buster-slim, as opposed to GH Actions)62 comments · 2020-02-26#973Issue: exec: "node": executable file not found in $PATH: unknown40 comments · 2022-01-27#303Support for podman39 comments · 2020-07-09#2196`.secrets` file is exposed to workflows21 comments · 2024-02-01#1166m1: act fails to pull with unauthorized: incorrect username or password21 comments · 2022-05-15#2105Request for Support: Integration of Cirruslabs/Tart with Nektos/Act20 comments · 2023-11-27#2239Error: failed to start container: Error response from daemon: error while creating mount source path18 comments · 2024-03-05#1929actions/upload-artifact@v3 fails with Unable to get ACTIONS_RUNTIME_TOKEN env variable17 comments · 2023-07-26
Discussions
#6245Is there a way to automatically clean the act-toolcache docker volume1 comments · 2026-11-05#6208How to use Forgejo Actions compatible syntax with Act? (jobs.<job_id>.uses)1 comments · 2026-10-26#6207[Feature Request]: Provide support for compiled agentic workflows0 comments · 2026-10-20#6192How to make act use a specific Docker image instead of the default one?2 comments · 2026-09-23#6190act ignoring if: conditions — steps that should be skipped are running anyway2 comments · 2026-09-22#6185Passing secrets to act without putting them in a file1 comments · 2026-09-16#6184How to use act with a workflow that needs access to a local database?1 comments · 2026-09-16#6183act not picking up changes to workflow files without restarting Docker2 comments · 2026-09-16
Latest release
v0.2.97 v0.2.97 2026-11-04Changelog Bug fixes 2540ba6c49dfbafe167d655e4044921cd2ed19e7 fix: mask nested secrets longest-first (GHSA-5xfg)