TL;DR: Netlify's built-in Git integration is genuinely good — until you need it to do something slightly outside its happy path. The second your build process requires more than "install, build, deploy," you hit a wall. 📖 Reading time: ~30 min What's in this article Why You'd Want GitHub Actions Handling Your Netlify Deploys What You Need Before Writing a Single Line of YAML The Baseline Workflow File — Production Deploy on Main Drop the file here and GitHub does the rest Deploy Previews for Pull Requests — the Feature Worth the Setup Why Deploy Previews Change How Your Team Reviews Frontend Work Gating the Deploy on Tests — the Actual Reason to Do This Injecting Build-Time Environment Variables Safely Why You'd Want GitHub Actions Handling Your Netlify Deploys Netlify's built-in Git integration is genuinely good — until you need it to do something slightly outside its happy path. The second your build process requires more than "install, build, deploy," you hit a wall.…