🚀 Stop Copy-Pasting NPM Publish Workflows – I Built a Reusable GitHub Action

June 30, 2025

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Phuc (Felix) Bui

Ever find yourself copying the same GitHub Actions workflow across multiple npm packages? I got tired of maintaining duplicate publishing workflows, so I built a reusable action that handles it all.

The Problem

I was copy-pasting this same workflow across 10+ repositories:

Setup Node.js and PNPM
Run tests (if they exist)
Update package.json version
Build the package
Publish to NPM
Commit changes back

Every time I wanted to improve the workflow, I had to update it in multiple repos. Not fun!

The Solution

I created Publish NPM Action – a single reusable action that handles the entire npm publishing pipeline.

What it does:

Smart testing – Automatically detects and runs tests
Version sync – Updates package.json with your release tag
Flexible building – Works with any build system
Git integration – Commits build files back to your repo
Secure publishing – Handles NPM authentication safely

Usage – Dead Simple

Just create .github/workflows/publish.yml:

name: Publish on Release

on:
  release:
    types: [published]

permissions:
  contents: write
  packages: write

jobs:
  publish:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          ref: main
          token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          fetch-depth: 0

      - name: Publish NPM Package
        uses: phucbm/publish-npm-action@v1
        with:
          npm-token: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}

That’s it! Create a release, and your package automatically publishes to NPM.

Advanced Configuration

Need customization? The action is highly configurable:

- name: Publish NPM Package
  uses: phucbm/publish-npm-action@v1
  with:
    npm-token: ${{ secrets.NPM_TOKEN }}
    # node-version: '20'                               # Node.js version, default is '18'
    # build-command: 'npm run build:prod'              # Build command, default is 'pnpm build'
    # output-dir: 'build/'                             # Output directory, default is 'dist/'
    # target-branch: 'develop'                         # Target branch, default is 'main'
    # skip-tests: 'true'                               # Skip tests, default is 'false'
    # commit-files: 'CHANGELOG.md docs/ types/'        # Additional files to commit, default is ''