The Feynman Filter: Explaining GitHub Actions to a Five-Year-Old

We often hide our lack of understanding behind jargon like “YAML orchestration,” “runners,” and “event-driven triggers.” The Feynman Technique forces us to strip that away.

If you can’t explain your CI/CD pipeline to a child, you don’t own the workflow; the workflow owns you.

Step 1: The Simple Analogy

Imagine a kitchen.

• The Event: Someone orders a sandwich.
• The Runner: The chef who does the work.
• The Action: The specific recipe for making the bread.

In GitHub Actions, we often get lost in the syntax. Try this: write out your .yml file logic in plain English sentences before you write a single line of code.

Step 2: Identifying the Gaps

When I first tried to explain “GitHub Secrets,” I realized I didn’t actually know where the encryption happened. By trying to explain the “Why” simply, I found the “Gap” in my knowledge.

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard Feynman

Applying it to your Workflow

In our next lab, we aren’t just going to copy-paste a workflow. We are going to deconstruct a ‘Build and Deploy’ script until it is so simple a peer from a non-tech background could follow the logic.