Comment by photobombastic

Building a step-through debugger for GitHub Actions workflows called PipeStep (https://github.com/Photobombastic/pipestep).

The idea came from the commit-push-wait-read-logs cycle that everyone seems to accept as normal when debugging CI. PipeStep parses your workflow YAML, spins up the right Docker container, and lets you pause before each step, inspect the container, shell in, set breakpoints, skip or retry steps. It deliberately doesn't try to replicate the full Actions runtime — no secrets, no matrix builds, no uses: execution. For that, use act. PipeStep is specifically for when something breaks and you want to figure out why without pushing 10 more commits.

Think of it as gdb for your CI pipeline. pip install pipestep, Python 3.11+, MIT, requires Docker.