What is the GitHub-native mechanism to pause a CI/CD pipeline and wait for human approval before proceeding?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Deployment environments with required reviewers are the built-in approval gate — the job pauses until named people click Approve.
Full Explanation
GitHub's native approval mechanism for pipelines is the deployment environment feature. Create an environment (e.g., 'production') in repository Settings → Environments, add required reviewers, then assign that environment to the job that needs approval: 'environment: production'. When the workflow reaches that job, it pauses and sends notifications to the reviewers, who can Approve or Reject in the GitHub UI. The job proceeds only after approval. 'approval: required' doesn't exist as a field. 'actions/wait-for-approval' is not an official GitHub action. The workflow_dispatch pattern is a workaround, not the native solution.