Move selected heavy checks after merge

Keep a deliberately chosen pull request gate and schedule heavier validation after merge, with explicit ownership of the resulting risk.

View in Markdown

Prompt

Evaluate and apply this CI technique to my repository: Move selected heavy checks after merge.

Keep a deliberately chosen pull request gate and schedule heavier validation after merge, with explicit ownership of the resulting risk.

Read the technique and its source-backed company examples: https://starsling.dev/ci-playbooks/techniques/defer-heavy-validation.md

Inspect this repository’s CI workflows, build and test commands, dependencies, and recent run timings. Identify where this technique applies and explain the expected benefit using this repository’s evidence.
Measure a baseline from recent comparable runs: elapsed time, queue time, runner minutes and failures where available. If data is unavailable, say what cannot be measured.
Compare relevant company approaches, checking prerequisites, platform differences and tradeoffs. Rank applicable options by evidence, fit and measurable opportunity; do not present company results as predictions for this repo.
Recommend the smallest safe change, show what checks and fallback paths remain, and ASK ME WHICH CHANGE TO APPROVE BEFORE EDITING ANY FILES.
Only after approval, work on a new feature branch, make one reversible change, and open a reviewable pull request. Never merge or push to a default or protected branch.
Keep required checks, test coverage, deployment and release behavior intact. Validate the change and compare equivalent runs where possible; report limitations and what should be monitored after merge.

View all playbooks

How companies used this technique

Read what each company changed and follow the original sources.

Run the heavy matrix after merge

Codex kept Bazel build, test and clippy on pull requests, along with Cargo hygiene and its required aggregate, and moved the full Cargo matrix to pushes on main.

Full Cargo matrix moved to post-merge pushes on main Source

Use it when: A heavyweight matrix repeats a signal another required workflow already provides.
Before applying it: A regression only the deferred legs catch now surfaces after merge. Count those leg-unique failures first, and give the post-merge run an owner who is notified and can block a release.

Move heavyweight checks after merge, by decision

Shopify/tecnix#74 keeps the component tests and cheap flake checks on pull requests. VM tests, the remaining flake checks, the installer tests and flake regressions run on pushes to main, merge-queue runs and manual dispatches, and as optional jobs on pull requests. The required check names still report on every pull request. The pattern match is partial: the PR moves whole suites after merge with their tradeoff written down in the PR.

Merged 2026-10-01; the pull-request conditions are on the default branch. Source

Use it when: Heavy suites sit on the required path of every pull request, and the cheaper checks catch nearly every break first.
Before applying it: Failures in the moved suites show up on main after merge, so someone has to watch main and act on them.

How companies used this technique

Run the heavy matrix after merge

Move heavyweight checks after merge, by decision

Related techniques

Package once, and build full installers after merge

After the first full agent scan, review only what changed

Install and build only the workspace packages a job uses

Company Playbooks

Related guides

Build and test only what changed

Cancel superseded CI runs

Cut CI queue time

Filter workflows by changed files