# Overview

## Overview

Copia Actions Runners bring CI/CD capabilities to your automation projects. With Actions Runners, you can define automated workflows that run against your Copia-hosted repositories — enabling tasks like code validation, testing, and deployment to execute automatically when changes are pushed and pull requests are opened.

Actions Runners use a workflow syntax that is largely compatible with GitHub Actions, so if your team is already familiar with GitHub Actions, you will find the experience very similar.

### Early Access

Copia Actions is currently available through a limited, invite-only Early Access testing phase, expected to run through the end of May 2026. As an early release, you may encounter bugs or areas where functionality is still being refined. We welcome your feedback during this period as it directly shapes the product ahead of general availability. If you are interested in using Copia Actions at your organization, please reach out to your Customer Success Manager to learn more about participation.

### Key Concepts

**Workflows** are automated processes defined in YAML files. You store them in your repository under the `.copia/workflows/` directory, and they run in response to events like pushes or pull requests.

**Actions** are reusable building blocks that perform specific tasks within a workflow. You can use publicly available actions from GitHub (such as `actions/checkout@v4`) or write your own.

**Runners** are the machines that execute your workflow jobs. At launch, Copia Actions Runners supports **self-hosted runners only** — meaning you provide and manage the machines that run your jobs. Copia-hosted runners are planned for a future release.

**Jobs** are sets of steps that execute on the same runner. A workflow can contain one or more jobs, and jobs can run in parallel or sequentially.

### What You Can Do

With Copia Actions, you can automate tasks across your development lifecycle:

* Run validation checks on PLC code when changes are pushed
* Execute test suites automatically on pull requests
* Enforce code quality standards before merges
* Trigger deployment or build processes on release events

### Self-Hosted Runners

At launch, all runners are self-hosted. This means your organization is responsible for provisioning and maintaining the machines that execute workflow jobs. Self-hosted runners give you full control over your execution environment, including:

* Hardware specifications and OS configuration
* Network access and security policies
* Pre-installed tools, libraries, and dependencies
* Cost management

Runners can execute jobs in isolated Docker containers or directly on the host machine. Docker mode provides better security and reproducibility, while host mode may be necessary for workflows that require access to specialized hardware or tools.

### Getting Started

If you are new to Copia Actions Runners, we recommend starting with the [Getting Started](/docs/actions/getting-started.md) guide to set up your first runner and run a simple workflow.

For a deeper understanding of how runners communicate with Copia and how jobs are executed, see [How It Works](/docs/actions/how-it-works.md).

### Compatibility with GitHub Actions

Copia Actions Runners workflow syntax is designed to be compatible with GitHub Actions. Most GitHub Actions workflows can be adapted for use with Copia with minimal changes. However, there are some differences to be aware of:

* Workflow files are stored in `.copia/workflows/` (not `.github/workflows/`).
* Some advanced GitHub Actions features are not yet supported. See [FAQs](/docs/actions/faqs.md) for a full list of known differences.
* You can reference actions from any public Git repository using absolute URLs.


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