Programming

Been dealing with this more often lately. Tests pass on my machine, I push, and CI blows up. Usually it's one of these:

• Different Node/Python/whatever version
• Missing env vars that exist in my .env but not in CI secrets
• File system case sensitivity (macOS vs Linux)
• Some flaky test that depends on timing

My current debugging flow is pretty basic: check the logs, compare versions, run the exact same Docker image locally if I can. But it still eats 20-30 minutes each time before I figure out the actual problem.

Anyone have a more systematic approach? Like a quick checklist you run through before you even look at the logs?

Also curious — do you replicate your CI environment locally with something like act (for GitHub Actions) or just trust the remote runner?