# Chainguard Guardener Hardened Actions

URL: https://deploy-preview-3756--ornate-narwhal-088216.netlify.app/chainguard/guardener/github/actions-security.md
Last Modified: August 10, 2026
Tags: GitHub, Automation

Configure Chainguard Guardener to recommend and migrate your GitHub Actions to Chainguard's hardened, SHA-pinned equivalents.

The Hardened Actions feature recommends and migrates your GitHub Actions to Chainguard’s hardened, SHA-pinned equivalents. Pinning actions to a specific commit SHA — rather than a mutable tag or branch — protects your workflows from supply chain attacks in which an upstream tag is moved to point at malicious code.
Hardened Actions operates in two independent modes:
Pull request recommendations — non-blocking review comments that suggest hardened action alternatives, with one-click suggestion blocks. Automated migration pull requests — a periodically maintained pull request that updates workflows across your repository. You can also trigger this migration on demand with chainctl instead of waiting for the next scheduled run. You can enable either mode on its own or both together.
Enable Hardened Actions Add a .chainguard/actions.yaml file to your repository:
enabled: trueWith just enabled: true, the Guardener posts non-blocking recommendation comments on pull requests that touch your workflows. It does not open pull requests of its own.
Enable automated migration pull requests To have the Guardener periodically open and maintain a pull request that migrates your workflows, enable the migrate block:
enabled: true migrate: enabled: true period: "168h"The Guardener opens (and keeps updated) a single migration pull request on the cadence you set with period.
Run an on-demand migration Instead of waiting for the next scheduled run — for example, right after enabling migration, or after Chainguard publishes a hardened equivalent for an action you use — you can trigger the migration immediately with chainctl.
An on-demand run performs exactly the same migration as the scheduled flow: it opens (or updates) the repository’s single migration pull request and honors the same .chainguard/actions.yaml configuration, including migrate.ignore. Because it shares the opt-in gate, the repository (or its organization, through the org-level .github configuration) must have migrate.enabled: true; if migration is not enabled, the run completes as a no-op without opening a pull request. Triggering an on-demand run does not change the periodic schedule.
Before you start, make sure that:
The Guardener GitHub App is installed and your Chainguard organization is linked to your GitHub organization, as described in Getting started. The migration must be requested through the Chainguard organization that owns the GitHub App installation. You hold the guardener.actions.migrate capability on that Chainguard organization. Organization owners have it, and it is included in the built-in guardener.user and guardener.admin roles. Refer to the Built-in roles and capabilities reference for more information on roles. Run chainctl guardener github migrate create with the repository to migrate:
chainctl guardener github migrate create <owner>/<repo> \ --parent <group-name>The repository can be given as owner/repo shorthand or as a full URL (https://github.com/owner/repo); only github.com repositories are supported today. --parent is the Chainguard organization that owns the GitHub App installation — if you omit it, chainctl prompts you to select one.
By default the command waits for the migration to finish (up to 10 minutes, adjustable with --timeout) and prints the result:
Repository: https://github.com/<owner>/<repo> Triggered by: you@example.com (user) Status: completed Pull request: https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/pull/42When there is nothing to migrate — every action is already on a Chainguard equivalent, the ignore rules exclude everything, or the repository has not enabled migration — the run reports Status: completed (no changes needed) instead of a pull request.
If the migration fails because the GitHub App installation does not cover the repository (for example, the app was installed on selected repositories and this one isn’t included), the error says so; grant the app access to the repository in your GitHub organization settings and trigger the migration again.
Check a migration operation Pass --wait=false to return immediately instead of waiting. The command prints an operation name of the form operations/migrate/<group>/<id>, which you can check later with chainctl guardener github migrate get:
chainctl guardener github migrate get operations/migrate/<group>/<id>The owning organization is derived from the operation name, so no --parent is needed. Add --wait to poll until the operation completes (bounded by --timeout, 10 minutes by default). Interrupting a waiting migrate create is also safe — the migration keeps running server-side, and the command prints the operation name so you can check it later.
For the complete set of flags and options, refer to the chainctl reference:
chainctl guardener github migrate chainctl guardener github migrate create chainctl guardener github migrate get Exclude files and actions Use the migrate.ignore block to exclude specific workflow files or upstream actions from automated migration. Both fields accept glob patterns:
enabled: true migrate: enabled: true period: "168h" ignore: files: - "release.yml" - "*.deprecated.yml" actions: - "actions/checkout" - "actions/*" ignore.files — workflow files (under .github/workflows/) to skip. ignore.actions — upstream actions to leave untouched. Configuration reference Field Default Purpose enabled true Enables inline pull request recommendation comments. migrate.enabled false Opts into automated migration pull requests. migrate.period 24h How often the migration pull request is refreshed. Clamped to a minimum of one day. migrate.ignore.files — Glob patterns for workflow files to skip during migration. migrate.ignore.actions — Glob patterns for upstream actions to skip during migration. The period value is a Go-style duration string (for example, 24h, 168h for one week).
Full example A complete .chainguard/actions.yaml enabling both recommendations and weekly automated migration, while leaving the actions/* family and a release workflow untouched:
enabled: true migrate: enabled: true period: "168h" ignore: files: - "release.yml" actions: - "actions/*" Next steps Commit Verification — Require cryptographically signed commits in pull requests. Configuration — Review the shared .chainguard/ configuration model.