https://github.com/LironeFitoussi/company-api-release-lab

Scenario

The backend team has handed you a working NestJS service called company-api. It compiles, the tests pass, it exposes three endpoints:

• GET /health — liveness probe
• GET /version — reads APP_VERSION, COMMIT_SHA, BUILD_DATE from the environment and returns them as JSON
• GET /users — CRUD scaffold

You are the DevOps engineer. Your job is not to write the application. Your job is to take this existing system and put it into a real release process — the same process that exists at every company that ships software in containers.

You will build:

1. A multi-stage Dockerfile that produces a small, secure, traceable image.
2. A multi-job GitHub Actions workflow that tests, builds, publishes the image to a container registry, and uploads a release manifest as an artifact.

Expected time: 6–10 hours.

Prerequisites

Before you start, confirm you have these installed and configured:

• Docker (docker --version) — for building and testing the image locally. Docker Desktop on Windows/macOS, or the engine on Linux.
• Node.js 20 (node --version) — for running npm test and npm run build locally.
• Git (git --version).
• GitHub account with permission to create a repo.
• GitHub CLI (gh --version) is highly recommended — the lab uses it for repo creation, scope grants, and watching workflow runs.

One non-obvious gh-CLI prerequisite