Verify Your Changes: The Checklist and the Gates
The post-change, pre-commit checklist: seven local commands, the eight CI gates, the six pipelines, and the safety and performance baselines.
Where you are, and what this lesson solves
Changing code is easy; proving you didn’t break anything is the craft. This lesson is the fixed post-change, pre-commit motion. A lookup lesson: read the section matching what you changed. With the previous lesson’s switches, the customization safety net is complete.
The local verification checklist (after every change, before every commit)
pnpm typecheck # 0 errors (astro check)
pnpm lint # 0 errors, 0 warnings
pnpm test # vitest all green (pure functions live in lib/, testable)
pnpm build # Zod schema validation + full site build
pnpm check-content # content lint (when MDX changed)
pnpm check-links # internal link audit (after build, always run)
pnpm check-i18n # after adding locale JSON keys, check coverageTwo special cases: changed an .astro route file → build is mandatory (getStaticPaths errors only surface at build); changed a workflow YAML → verify it parses (python3 -c "import yaml; yaml.safe_load(open('<file>'))" — this template once broke on YAML indentation).
The eight CI gates (every push, on your behalf)
CI runs the full gate set on every push: lint → typecheck → test → check-config → build → check-content → check-links → check-i18n — one red blocks the merge. The cheapest local reproduction is running the checklist above.
Locating a red CI: open the failed job, read the last log line — the failing gate is named at the top of the log; reproduce locally with the same command, fix, push, CI reruns itself.
Six automatic pipelines (.github/workflows/)
| Pipeline | When | What it guards |
|---|---|---|
| CI | every push / PR | The eight gates; one red blocks everything |
| Content freshness audit | weekly (cron) | Freshness audit, auto-opens issues for stale pages. Official repo only by default (forks stay silent by default, sparing you the noise); to enable: have AI delete the if: github.repository == line. It only reminds, never edits content |
| Initialize AnvilWiki | manual | Post-fork cleanup: resets wrangler.toml vars, removes the project page, optional demo clear. Does not swap game name / color / languages — those need local pnpm apply-template |
| Auto content PR | manual | The content pipeline: paste a CSV or codes list, deterministic generators draft the articles, all eight gates run before a draft PR opens — content always lands via PR, never direct to main |
| IndexNow | after CI succeeds | Submits the production sitemap’s URLs to search engines (IndexNow protocol, faster indexing); unconfigured forks exit with zero requests |
| Release anvilwiki-ops | ops-v* tag push |
Publishes the tools/anvil-ops npm package (maintainer-facing), gated by a GitHub Environment approval |
Safety baselines (built in — don’t dismantle)
- Structured-data escaping: data cards for Google go through
JsonLd.astrofor character escaping — new data components reuse it, never hand-roll. - Sponsored links: the affiliate component auto-adds
sponsored nofollow; outbound links getnoopener. - No tracking before consent: until the cookie consent click, GA and AdSense genuinely never load.
- Secrets stay out of the repo: everything sensitive is a variable;
.envis gitignored.
Performance baselines (hold these when touching code)
- Zero JS frameworks: no React/Vue runtimes; interactions use native browser capability plus minimal vanilla script.
- Images go through the pipeline (auto WebP, mobile variants).
- Score check:
pnpm build && npx wrangler pages dev dist, then Lighthouse in the browser — four 100s is the out-of-box contract; don’t be the one who breaks it.
Stuck?
- “Green locally, red on CI”: compare Node/pnpm versions (CI runs 22 LTS) and confirm the same commands ran.
- “A test broke and I didn’t touch tests”: a pure function’s behavior changed; the test is the contract — fix the implementation, not the test.
✅ Acceptance (all must hold)
- ☐ CI is green on your fork’s Actions page
- ☐ You’ve run the seven local commands and know what each guards
- ☐ New components reuse JsonLd.astro — no hand-rolled data
Next lesson
Self-verified changes merge safely. The template keeps shipping — next lesson: bringing official updates in safely. Sync Upstream