Chapter 02 · 10 minutes

Set up

Fork the repository, run Pulse on your machine, and switch on Actions in your fork.

Goal

Your own fork, with Pulse running locally and its workflows enabled on GitHub.

Fork jars-demo/github-actions-demo with the Fork button. Workflows run in your fork, under your account, for free on public repositories.
Enable Actions. In your fork, open the Actions tab. GitHub pauses workflows in new forks until you click I understand my workflows, go ahead and enable them.

Clone and run Pulse. You need Node.js 22 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/YOUR-NAME/github-actions-demo.git
cd github-actions-demo/backend
npm ci
npm test
npm start

Try it.

curl http://localhost:3000/health
curl "http://localhost:3000/api/greet?name=Ada"
curl http://localhost:3000/api/version

/api/version says "commit":"local". In CI it shows the real commit, because the code reads GITHUB_SHA, a variable every workflow run sets:

commit: (env.GITHUB_SHA ?? env.PULSE_COMMIT ?? 'local').slice(0, 12),

Command	What it runs
`npm ci`	installs the exact versions in `package-lock.json`
`npm run typecheck`	the TypeScript compiler, checking types only
`npm test`	builds, then runs the tests with Node's built-in test runner
`npm start`	the server in `dist/src/server.js`

These are exactly the commands CI runs. A good pipeline runs what you run, nothing magic.

npm test reports every test passing, and curl http://localhost:3000/health returns {"status":"ok"}.

Read backend/openapi.yaml. Which status code and error code do you get for /api/greet?name= with an empty name? Check it with curl -i.