Pass CLI Flags to Claude in GitHub Actions with claude_args
The GA v1 release of Claude Code GitHub Actions consolidated a bunch of separate inputs into a single claude_args parameter. If you've been trying to figure out where max_turns or model went, this is it.
- uses: anthropics/claude-code-action@v1
with:
anthropic_api_key: ${{ secrets.ANTHROPIC_API_KEY }}
prompt: "Review this PR for security issues"
claude_args: |
--max-turns 10
--model claude-sonnet-4-6
--append-system-prompt "Follow our coding standards"
Any flag you'd normally pass to the claude CLI works here. Common ones include --max-turns to cap iterations, --model to pick a specific model, --allowedTools to restrict tool access, and --mcp-config to load MCP servers.
If you're migrating from the beta, the old custom_instructions, max_turns, and model inputs are gone. They all live in claude_args now:
# Old beta style (no longer works)
max_turns: "10"
model: "claude-sonnet-4-6"
# New v1 style
claude_args: "--max-turns 10 --model claude-sonnet-4-6"
One string to rule them all, and in the workflow bind them.
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Set up Claude Code as an automated reviewer in your CI pipeline — on every pull request, it reads the diff, checks for bugs, security issues, missing tests, and convention violations, then posts its findings as a PR comment. Your human reviewers get a head start because the obvious issues are already flagged before they look.
Before deploying, tell Claude to read your project — migrations, environment variables, queue workers, scheduled tasks, caching, third-party integrations — and generate a deployment checklist that's specific to your app. Not a generic "did you run migrations?" list, but one that knows YOUR infrastructure and catches the things YOUR deploy can break.
Instead of writing a README from memory or copying a template, tell Claude to read your project and generate one that's actually accurate — real setup instructions from your config, real architecture from your directory structure, real API examples from your routes, and real prerequisites from your dependency files.