Skipping a build

Skip an Argos build to report success without screenshots when a required check shouldn't run a visual comparison.

Sometimes you want Argos to report success without running visual tests.

This is useful when Argos is configured as a required GitHub status check, but you intentionally want to skip screenshots for a commit or pull request.

A skipped build:

• uploads no screenshots
• runs no visual comparison
• immediately marks the commit status as success

Creating a skipped build

You can skip a build in two ways.

Environment variable

Set the environment variable ARGOS_SKIPPED to "true" in your CI configuration.

GitHub Actions example:

jobs:
  visual-tests:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v6
        with:
          node-version: 22
      - name: Run tests
        run: npm run visual-tests # or your test command
        env:
          ARGOS_SKIPPED: "true"

This reports a successful Argos check without uploading screenshots.

Using the CLI

You can also explicitly create a skipped build using the CLI.

.github/workflows/ci.yml

jobs:
  visual-tests:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v6
      - uses: actions/setup-node@v6
        with:
          node-version: 22
      - name: Skip Argos build
        run: npx @argos-ci/cli skip

This immediately creates a successful Argos build with no visual testing.

For parallel builds in finalize mode where every upload step may be skipped (e.g. by a task cache), use argos finalize --skip-if-empty instead: it finalizes the build when shards were uploaded, and creates a skipped build otherwise. See Cached CI pipelines (Turborepo, Nx).