How do you run Cypress in CI?

A CI run needs the same things as a local headless run, plus orchestration: install dependencies, start the application, wait until it is ready, run Cypress, and preserve artifacts. The most common failure is starting Cypress before the app is reachable.

name: cypress
on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: cypress-io/github-action@v6
        with:
          build: npm run build
          start: npm start
          wait-on: "http://localhost:3000"
          browser: chrome
      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        if: failure()
        with:
          name: cypress-artifacts
          path: |
            cypress/screenshots
            cypress/videos

CI checklist

• Use a reproducible install such as npm ci
• Set baseUrl to the CI server address
• Wait on a health endpoint before running specs
• Pin the browser and Cypress version
• Upload artifacts on failure, not only on success
• Keep secrets such as a record key in CI secrets
• Run the same command locally so CI is not a separate universe

Cache the package manager and the Cypress binary to save time, but invalidate the cache when the Cypress version changes. If tests need a database, provision it in the job and seed it deterministically before the run.