TL;DR: Netlify's Git integration is genuinely great for the first week of a project. You connect a repo, it detects your framework, and deploys happen automatically on every push.

📖 Reading time: ~29 min

What's in this article

The Problem With Letting Netlify Own Your Build Pipeline

What You Need Before Starting

Step 1 — Disconnect Netlify's Built-In Git Integration

Step 2 — Write the GitHub Actions Workflow File

The file path is non-negotiable

Step 3 — Handle Deploy Previews for Pull Requests

The Workflow Trigger You Actually Want

Gotchas I Hit That the Docs Don't Warn You About

The Problem With Letting Netlify Own Your Build Pipeline

Netlify's Git integration is genuinely great for the first week of a project. You connect a repo, it detects your framework, and deploys happen automatically on every push. That convenience has a ceiling, and most teams hit it faster than they expect.

The ceiling I hit looked like this: our build was passing locally, CI was green, and we pushed to main.…