From GitHub Actions to Authenticated URL: A Better Way to Share CI Artifacts

CI produces HTML worth reading by people who never open GitHub: coverage reports, Playwright runs, build previews, agent-authored dossiers. GitHub's own artifact storage locks those behind a login and a 90-day clock. This guide swaps one workflow step so the report lands at a company-gated URL that renders in the browser and never expires.

The problem with GitHub Actions artifact storage

GitHub Actions stores build artifacts in a zip archive. To access them:

1. Go to the Actions run in GitHub
2. Find the artifact section
3. Click Download
4. Extract the zip
5. Open the HTML file locally

This works for engineers. It's unusable for everyone else.

Your PM can't access private repository Actions without a GitHub account. Your QA manager shouldn't need to navigate GitHub's CI interface to read a test report. Your VP shouldn't be extracting zip files to see a build summary.

And after 90 days, the artifact is gone. GitHub retains Actions artifacts for 90 days by default on public repos (up to 400 configurable on private repos), per the GitHub Actions usage-limits docs. Any link shared in a Slack thread, Notion document, or Jira ticket goes dead when that window closes.

The one-line change

Before:

- uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
  with:
    name: research-dossier
    path: ./research-dossier/

After:

- name: Publish dossier
  run: |
    npm install -g @displaydev/cli
    dsp publish ./research-dossier/ --name "dossier-${{ github.run_id }}"
  env:
    DISPLAYDEV_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.DISPLAYDEV_API_KEY }}

The URL never changes, requires a company email to access, and renders in the browser without downloading.

Full workflow example

name: Test and Publish
 
on: [push, pull_request]
 
jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      
      - name: Setup Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: '20'
          cache: 'npm'
      
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm ci
      
      - name: Lint
        run: npm run lint
      
      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test -- --coverage
        continue-on-error: true
      
      - name: Build
        run: npm run build
      
      - name: Publish test coverage report
        if: always()
        run: |
          npm install -g @displaydev/cli
          # dsp publish prints the URL on stdout line 1 and a status line on line 2;
          # head -n 1 captures just the URL.
          COVERAGE_URL=$(dsp publish ./coverage/lcov-report/ \
            --name "coverage-${{ github.sha }}" | head -n 1)
          echo "COVERAGE_URL=$COVERAGE_URL" >> $GITHUB_ENV
        env:
          DISPLAYDEV_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.DISPLAYDEV_API_KEY }}
      
      - name: Comment on PR
        if: always() && github.event_name == 'pull_request'
        uses: actions/github-script@v7
        with:
          script: |
            github.rest.issues.createComment({
              issue_number: context.issue.number,
              owner: context.repo.owner,
              repo: context.repo.repo,
              body: `📊 **Coverage report:** ${process.env.COVERAGE_URL}`
            })

Use cases this covers

Agent-authored artifacts: Multi-page research dossiers, market maps, and competitive landscapes generated by a coding agent in CI. With more than half of professional developers now using AI coding tools daily (Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey), more of what CI generates is agent-written HTML meant for non-engineers to read.

Build outputs: Preview builds for non-engineers. PMs and designers can review what's shipping without needing a local development environment.

Scheduled report generation: Nightly builds, weekly analytics exports, automated competitive monitoring reports, anything a scheduled workflow generates and stakeholders need to read.

Viewer experience

The PR comment appears with a URL. The QA lead clicks it, signs in with Google in one click, and sees the full interactive test report in their browser. No GitHub account, no zip file, no 90-day expiry.

The URL persists in Slack threads, Notion documents, and Jira tickets indefinitely.

Cost comparison