Features

Collaboration is GitHub's core. Features are the rest: capabilities that have no equivalent in Git itself and exist only because the code is hosted on GitHub.

GitHub Actions runs CI/CD natively. You commit a workflow file describing when something should happen — on every push, on a pull request, on a schedule, on a release — and GitHub runs it. Build, test and deploy steps are a few lines of YAML, with no external service to configure. If you adopt one thing from GitHub, adopt this.

GitHub Pages hosts a static site straight from a repository, which is enough for documentation sites and project pages. Branch-based previews mean every pull request gets its own URL.

GitHub Packages stores container images, npm, Maven, NuGet and Ruby gems alongside the code, with the same access control and versioning as the repository.

GitHub Projects is issue tracking as a board. Issues become cards, and issues that are not issues — a piece of work, a bug — can be tracked there instead.

Security tooling runs on every push. Code scanning flags patterns that suggest a vulnerability, dependabot opens pull requests for dependencies with known flaws, and secret scanning catches committed credentials.

Gists are small snippets, useful for sharing a snippet without a repository.

Start with GitHub Actions, then GitHub Pages if you have something to publish.

Free Resources