GitHub Actions as a Service

It's no secret that over at Laravel we host our code on GitHub. However, because the code to some of our platforms (such as Forge) is proprietary, we try to be careful regarding which services or integrations have access to that code.

As a result, we haven't had any services auto-review our PR's for inconsistencies or simple bugs, and primarily had to rely on offline tools such as PHP-CS-Fixer and ESLint to get the job done.

Now, while most of these tools are pretty great, they unfortunately don't run automatically when you create a PR. Of course, you could configure git hooks with tools such as Husky, but in my experience those often tend to get in the way, both because most people configure their machines slightly differently, as well as that they don't give other people on the team any insights into whether all checks are passing, or whether git hooks were skipped altogether.

So, naturally, when I joined Laravel, one of the first things I did was find a solution to this problem. Ideally, it would do all of the following, without user interaction, and without us launching a new first-party service:

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