CI/CD Integration

CI/CD Integration

This guide shows how to integrate coding standards into your continuous integration and deployment workflow so that standards drift is caught automatically.

How Standards Stay Current

Three layers keep your project in sync:

1. Git hooks — detect updates after every pull or merge.
2. Sync scripts — manually or programmatically update all agent configs.
3. CI/CD checks — block pull requests when standards are out of date.

Standards Check in CI

Add a job that fails when the standards submodule is behind the remote:

.github/workflows/standards-check.yml

name: Check Standards

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  check-standards:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          submodules: true

      - name: Check standards are up to date
        run: make check-standards

make check-standards compares the local submodule commit with origin/main. If they differ, the step exits with a non-zero code and the workflow fails.

Scheduled Auto-Update

Create a workflow that opens a commit (or a pull request) when new standards are available:

.github/workflows/update-standards.yml

name: Update Standards

on:
  schedule:
    - cron: '0 0 * * 1'  # Every Monday at midnight UTC
  workflow_dispatch:

jobs:
  update:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          submodules: true

      - name: Update standards submodule
        run: |
          cd .standards
          git pull origin main
          cd ..
          git add .standards
          git commit -m "chore: update standards submodule" || exit 0
          git push

Git Hooks

The scripts/setup.sh script installs a post-merge hook that runs after every git pull or git merge. The hook fetches from the standards remote and prints a warning if newer commits exist.

# Installed at .git/hooks/post-merge
#!/bin/bash
if [ -d ".standards" ]; then
    cd .standards
    git fetch origin >/dev/null 2>&1
    LOCAL=$(git rev-parse HEAD)
    REMOTE=$(git rev-parse origin/main 2>/dev/null || git rev-parse origin/master 2>/dev/null)
    if [ "$LOCAL" != "$REMOTE" ] && [ -n "$REMOTE" ]; then
        echo "Standards repository has updates. Run: make sync-standards"
    fi
fi

Manual Sync

Run the sync script at any time to pull the latest standards and update all agent configuration files:

make sync-standards
# or
.standards/scripts/sync-standards.sh

After syncing, restart your editor to pick up the new configuration.

Update Flow

Standards Repository (new commit pushed)
         |
         v
Project Repositories
         |
         +-- Git hook detects update --> prints reminder
         +-- CI/CD job checks --> fails PR if outdated
         +-- Manual sync --> make sync-standards
         +-- Scheduled workflow --> auto-updates weekly
         |
         v
Agent config files updated (.cursorrules, .aiderrc, etc.)
         |
         v
Restart editor --> new rules active

Best Practices

• Check on every PR. A failing standards check is the easiest way to prevent drift.
• Pin to versions in production projects. Use git checkout v1.x.x inside the submodule so updates are intentional.
• Automate notifications. Post in Slack or Discord when the scheduled update workflow pushes a new commit.
• Test first. Try new standards in a test project before rolling them out to all repositories.