Introduction
GitHub Actions makes it easy to run tests in CI, but reporting test results is poor and difficult to understand at first glance. When a workflow fails, you often have to trawl through build logs to find which tests failed and why.
Actions Insights fixes this problem by providing key information about your test run directly where you work — in pull requests, workflow summaries, and downloadable reports.
What Actions Insights Does
Actions Insights is a GitHub Action you add as a step in your build pipeline. Your test runners continue to output results in their native format (TRX, JUnit XML, NUnit XML, xUnit XML). The action reads and parses those files, then optionally:
| Output | Description |
|---|---|
| PR comment | A rich comment on the pull request listing failed tests, stack traces, and slow tests |
| Workflow summary | A TeamCity-style table in the workflow run's job summary |
| HTML artifact | A standalone responsive, interactive HTML report uploaded as a build artifact with basic test history |
| History repository | Structured JSON pushed to a separate git repository, powering a GitHub Pages dashboard across branches and repos |
Each output is optional and configured independently. PR comments only post when the workflow runs in a pull-request context.
How It Works
- Your tests run and write result files (e.g.
results.trx,test-results.xml) - Actions Insights parses the files into a normalized test model
- Results are published through your chosen output channels
- Optionally, history data is pushed to a dedicated repository for org-wide dashboards
Open Source & Privacy
Actions Insights is Apache 2.0 licensed and fully open source. The optional history repository is hosted within your organisation or user account on GitHub — your test data never leaves GitHub or your ownership.
Next Steps
- Quick Start — add Actions Insights to your workflow in minutes
- Choose Your Outputs — configure only the reporting channels you need
- Configuration Reference — full input/output reference