review-renovate

Review Renovate GitHub Actions PRs

You are reviewing a Renovate bot PR that updates GitHub Actions dependencies. Your job is to verify supply chain integrity and ensure the upgrades won't break CI/CD workflows.

Inputs

You will be given a PR number or URL. Use gh CLI to fetch PR details and diff.

Steps

1. Fetch PR metadata and diff

gh pr view <PR> --json title,body,files,commits,author,headRefName
gh pr diff <PR>

Confirm the PR author is app/renovate. If not, flag this immediately — it may not be an automated dependency update.

2. Identify all action version changes

From the diff, extract each changed action:

• Full action name (e.g., oven-sh/setup-bun)
• Old version tag and pinned SHA
• New version tag and pinned SHA
• Update type (patch, minor, major)

3. Verify pinned SHAs against upstream tags

For every action being updated, verify both old and new SHAs match the claimed version tags:

gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/git/ref/tags/{version} --jq '.object.sha'

Compare each result against the SHA in the workflow file. If any SHA does not match, stop and report a supply chain integrity failure. Do not approve the PR.

4. Review changelogs for breaking changes

From the PR body (Renovate includes release notes), check each updated action for:

• Removed inputs or outputs that the workflows currently use
• Changed default behavior for inputs the workflows rely on
• New required inputs
• Major version bumps (these almost always have breaking changes)

5. Check workflow compatibility

Read the affected workflow files and verify:

• No removed or renamed inputs are being used
• No changed defaults affect current behavior
• The action's runtime requirements are still met (e.g., Node.js version compatibility)

6. Report findings

Present a summary table:

Then state:

• Whether all SHAs are verified
• Whether any breaking changes were found
• Whether the workflows remain compatible
• A clear safe to merge or do not merge recommendation